


And the future runs through our bones

by Sylvalum



Category: Iron Man (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Aldrich Killian is a nasty little man, Canon-Typical Violence, Christmas Party, Extremis Tony Stark, Gen, Gun Violence, Happy Ending, Iron Man 3, M/M, Mutual Pining, Past Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), The Endless Tragedy of Steve Rogers' life, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 00:31:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,928
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21795406
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sylvalum/pseuds/Sylvalum
Summary: Maya says, “I think my boss is the Mandarin.”The weird blond guy wrings his hands and says, “I’m Steve Rogers from ten years in the future.”Tony raises his eyebrows and manages to say, “Oh, wow.”And then JARVIS alerts them that someone’s trying to shoot missiles at the house.
Relationships: Maya Hansen & Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 32
Kudos: 302





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> merry crisis! this thing is about 17k words longer than i thought it'd be  
title from the song _we are the hearts_ by EXGF

It’s yuletide, Xmas season, the jolliest most excruciatingly uncomfortable time of the year, and Tony sits alone in his mansion in Malibu with all his empty suits of armour, his head in his hands, and wonders where the hell he went wrong.

Happy’s in the hospital.

Pepper left and Rhodey’s abroad on mission and Happy’s in the _ hospital. _

When someone rings the doorbell he’s first suspicious, then deeply uninterested, and then he finally gives in and checks the monitor that’s showing him the view from the camera above the front door. It’s a woman and a man standing there, brunette and blond respectively, and on closer look- that’s Maya Hansen. Definitely Maya Hansen, and some vaguely familiar dude accompanying her, alright, probably not working for the Mandarin then, even if Tony can’t remember there being any kind of threesome that night in Switzerland, but _ not everything is about Tony. _ That’s the whole point he’s been trying to get.

Maybe Maya got married, or something.

“Sir?” JARVIS prompts him, and Tony gets up, puts on a gauntlet, and goes upstairs.

When J opens the door to let them in, Tony leans against a wall with his arm up and gauntlet trained on them.

They stop just past the threshold, and Maya gives him such an exasperated look, it’d fit Pepper. She says, frustration already evident in her tone, “Tony, could you not - could I please talk to you?”

“Sure, Hansen,” he says, and keeps the gauntlet raised. “And who’s that guy?”

The guy in question is tall and has a proper beard, with kind of long-ish hair. He’s pretty hot. In case he _ was _ in Switzerland that night, Tony’s disappointed at his past self for not sleeping with him.

“I don’t know,” Maya says, obviously irritated. “He said he had a delivery?”

Tony’s suspicion levels spike immensely, but then the guy holds up his hands and says, “Wait, wait,” and Tony _ knows _ that voice. He can’t place it but he knows it, he’s a 100 percent sure, and then the guy says, not exactly pleading, but still with an _ impression _ of doing that in his expression and in his ridiculous pouting mouth and scrunched brows, “Could I talk to you in private, Stark? It’s really important, I swear.”

“I also need to talk to you, Tony,” Maya bites out, clutching her bag tightly. “It is incredibly urgent.”

To hell with it. 

“JARVIS? Lock everything down.” He lowers his gauntlet as JARVIS locks the doors again and shuts off the TV, and tony says, “Why don’t the both of you explain yourselves? Right now works fine. Just me and Jay in the house, I promise.”

_ And _ the forty suits of armour, but it’s not like anyone knows about those.

Maya Hansen and the guy both look annoyed at him now, Maya more frustrated while the guy looks straight up stressed, but it’s not like that would deter Tony. He doesn’t bother to take off the gauntlet as he sprawls on the sofa, deliberately casual, all: _ look at me, _ I’m comfortable and at home and this is _ my _ domain, don’t even think about trying anything.

Maya says, “I think my boss is the Mandarin.”

The guy wrings his hands and says, “I’m Steve Rogers from ten years in the future.”

Tony raises his eyebrows and manages to say, “Oh, wow.”

And then JARVIS alerts them that someone’s trying to shoot missiles at the house.

* * *

When the missile hits and Tony falls off the sofa, the first thing he does is to call the rest of the armour up from the basement and send it over to catch Maya, who’s still an unenhanced human even if she might be in cahoots with a criminal, and then he hits the floor. It’s not great, and it gets_ rapidly _ worse as half the room starts tilting as if it’s going to break right off and slough into the ocean, fuck, shit, and there goes the guy who _ might _ be a Steve Rogers, struggling to his feet and holding up the coffee table as a shield.

Okay, _ probably _ a Steve Rogers, then.

The room’s starting to fill with smoke even though all the panorama windows just broke, and_ oh _ fuck the ceiling-

-then Rogers lunges at him and presses him down, shields the both of them with the goddamn coffee table, just in time, the split-second before rubble from the ceiling rains down on them. Damn, Rogers is so fast and so capable it’s not even fair, his eyes are ice-blue and so close, why on Earth did he grow a fucking _ beard, _ Tony’s heart is already beating painfully fast beneath his metal sternum thanks to the panic.

“It’s okay,” Rogers tells him, in a tone that Tony would call soothing if there weren’t literal fires breaking out behind them, and Tony can’t even think of a reply before two nerve-wracking seconds have already passed and he’s missed his window of opportunity, and so Rogers gets up and off him. 

He pulls Tony to his feet a second after. Tony lets him help, resolves to just try to focus on breathing, clearing his goddamn head, and figuring out a way out of this situation - and so he takes stock of what’s happening.

_ Maya, _ he then remembers. He whirls around but she’s not there, “JARVIS, where’s Maya?”

And as soon as JARVIS tells him that she’s safely outside Tony calls the armour back to him using the chips in his arms, and goes to stand with Rogers and watch the several helicopters with missiles that are waiting above the ocean together with the news copters circling like vultures in the distance. “You,” he says to Rogers, pointing to him with an arm that’s rapidly getting armoured up as the pieces come flying, _ “You _ don’t have a suit, you have to leave. Get out.”

“Stark,” Rogers begins, but another missile hitting the house drowns him out.

Everything shakes and the explosion whites out Tony’s HUD for a second, but by the next one he’s already grabbing Steve and pulling him away toward the front entrance, away from the growing abyss in his nice hardwood floor and the roar of the ocean.

“Get _ out of here,” _ he orders Rogers angrily. “I’ll talk to you later, just leave-”

Rogers sets his jaw - and then he turns around and does as Tony’s asked, like miracles really _ do _ happen huh, though the relief Tony gets from that is barely even noticeable in the cocktail of the rest of his emotions. Right, terrorists blowing up his house, he can deal with this, he’s dealing with this.

Launching a piano he doesn’t even know how to play and bought only for snobbery purposes because Obie insisted at a goddamn helicopter that’s trying to blow up his mansion and robots is - or scratch that, _ would _ certainly be - a great stress-reliever, if it wasn’t for the fact that _ Happy’s in the hospital, _ Maya Hansen knows the Mandarin, a time-traveling Steve Rogers decided to visit him _ now, _ and this is a battle he’s going to start losing soon, fast, and it’s going to be filmed and end up on TV and Pep and Rhodey will worry, another missile and his bots are going to crash into the ocean with his living room, garage and bedrooms and-

-and this is the exact moment he starts losing. 

Warnings fly across the HUD as bits of his house start sliding off the cliff, and then what used to be a supporting pillar knocks him over and drags him down, and his plans, his calculations - it all flies apart. He’s falling, and his flight repulsors aren’t working and he’s going to hit the water-

And then he’s out.

* * *

Stark’s villa by the ocean is starting to fall apart as Steve runs out, sprinting towards where Maya Hansen is curled up on the driveway.

And all he can hear is his blood pounding in his ears and all he can think about is Tony’s face.

Steve knows he’s on his last mission - and that he’s quite literally got all the time in the world to complete it.

He already _ has _ completed it, in fact, has returned all the stones already.

But the thing is that he suddenly realised, on the way to Vormir from Morag, that _ he has all the time in the world. _ He doesn’t have to return immediately, or even in twenty years - he’s got time. And when that sunk in, some of his existential dread dissipated. The more time he wasted on pointless shit, like figuring out the longest possible way to take to Asgård and Vormir, the longer he had to decide on what he wanted next in life. Which was something he really did _ not _ know, as he also slowly realised. Maybe some of Sam’s advice that he had ignored earlier had finally, at last, after the end of it all, started to sink through Steve’s thick skull, because then he actually started to _ consider. _

He’s still looking for an answer.

-He’s kneeling on the pavement and putting a hand on Hansen’s shoulder, and then she’s up, immediately. Another civilian getting in harm’s way, because of superheroes and the never ending drama of their lives, and how did Steve never notice until it was too late?

“My car,” Hansen gasps. There’s blood trickling from a cut just below her hairline and she’s got a manic look in her eyes, refuses Steve’s help to stand up. “We need to get-”

They get going.

Steve doesn’t look back - he knows the house will fall, he knows Tony will survive it, he _ knows _ this was a bad time to visit.

But hearing Tony’s voice again, threatening him and asking him who he is instead of reading out his will- it was as incredible as it was jarring. Even JARVIS’s - the same exact voice as Vision - was so weird to hear again. Steve’s recovered from that now though; he’s back on track, eyes on the goal, target in sight - even if the target’s just Maya Hansen’s car.

He knew when he came here that he’d run into people he’d seen die. That was the whole _ reason _ he came here, to see Nat and Tony again. Or even - a younger Clint or Bruce, a happier Thor. Phil Coulson. Anyone or anything lost and forgotten, because seeing them again might even be good for him. He’s not going to return to 2023 just yet.

And oh, how he’s missed them. Even Tony.

They never seemed to get to talk with each other for as long as they would've liked to, never got as close as Steve would’ve liked to, and they did have fights, they did have that really big fight, but Steve - sometimes he’d just talk to Tony and Tony would look up at him and their eyes would meet in this way that’d make Steve feel like… like something clicked. Like, _ yes, this is how it’s supposed to be. This is the only place I’m meant to be _.

Even if Steve was young and stupid, he got that much.

And Tony attracted attention like that - you looked at him once and then couldn’t take your eyes off him, like suddenly he just owned the room even if all he was doing was making coffee. Quick hands moving over the machine, his throat when he’d swallow, him telling Clint off for making a mess of the counters; all little shards of him. How he’d grimace at someone when they annoyed him, how he rolled his eyes, scrunched his nose, his god-awful smoothies he was always drinking, gesturing with the glass, the exact way he’d lounge into a chair-- Steve hoarded all these tiny bits of him up with his perfect supersoldier memory, used to take them out for consideration again when he was cold and miserable.

Tony was warm, and Steve held the last of that glow close to his heart like a thief in the winter.

-and now it’s 2012 and Tony’s fallen into the ocean in one of his early suits, and Steve’s sitting in Maya Hansen’s car as she takes them down along a road to LA, her face grim and focused.

She knows his secret.

He told her and Tony and JARVIS, and it could mean next to nothing, or it could be incredibly dangerous. Steve doesn’t know because he doesn’t know _ her, _ the news barely mentioned her back in his timeline and neither did Tony.

Because he and Tony never talked.

(he remembers the warmth of Tony’s skin below him so clearly it’s almost like he can still feel him, like an ache in his bones)

“You’re Captain America?” Hansen demands at last, in the calm of the car. She’s stopped bleeding and she sounds utterly unimpressed.

Could mean nothing. Could mean everything.

“I guess,” Steve says. Then he remembers what time he’s in, sets his jaw and says again, much firmer and surer, “Yes. One of them.”

“I’m working at a think-tank called AIM, for a man named Aldrich Killian,” Hansen says grimly. “I’m developing a technological virus that can rewrite biology, and he’s funding it.”

Steve frowns. “And he’s the Mandarin?”

“Either that, or he’s funding him.”

“You don’t think that, though,” Steve states.

“Killian’s a control freak,” Hansen says. “Much like Tony Stark. Of course he’s the man behind the Mandarin.”

Aldrich Killian is indeed the Mandarin, as Steve knows from watching the news about ten years ago. But he has no idea where Hansen stands, or what her motives are, or what she’s trying to do. Neither of them are worried about Tony, it would seem - Steve, because he knows with dead certainty that Tony will be fine - and Maya Hansen, because… well, she’s apparently not that close to Tony, or Steve just can’t read her. He just doesn’t have Natasha’s talent for dismantling facades. 

Either way, he’ll be watching Hansen.

Because he’s not going to get himself murdered at a gas station parking lot in California in 2012 just because he’s a fucking idiot.

Nat would be ashamed of him if that happened.

After a moment Steve asks Hansen, “Where are we going?”

“To someplace nice where I can get rid of you.”

“No,” Steve says, suddenly recalling the piece of news addressing Maya Hansen’s tragic death from literal _ homicide. _ “I don’t think so. I’m coming with you.”

“No, you’re not,” Hansen says simply.

“I know where we can find Stark,” Steve says, offering up a bargaining chip from his perfect supersoldier memory, because if there’s one thing he’s learnt today it’s that Hansen_ really _ wants to speak with Tony. Who doesn’t? “He’ll get up from that ocean floor, and when he _ does, _ I know exactly where he’ll be.”

Hansen is quiet for a moment, but Steve can see a muscle in her jaw working. Then she bites out, “Fine. Shoot, where is he going?”

“Rose Hill, in rural Tennessee.”


	2. Chapter 2

Waking up just moments before the Iron Man suit crashes into some snowy forest in the middle of fucking nowhere, Tennessee, “five miles outside of Rose Hill”, is exactly as unpleasant as Tony would’ve imagined if he’d have ever bothered to picture this very scenario before. Why the fuck is he in Tennessee? Because JARVIS’s latest flight plan leads here? Tony _ knows _ he programmed J better than that; this is a deliberate decision on his part, or at least it’s the absence of any smarter, better choice.

-and just as Tony is about to tell him to head back west, c’mon, the battery goes and dies on him. Lights out. His only ally effectively falls asleep on him.

The air’s biting cold in the Tennessee night, after spending months down in California with comfortably toasty A/C, and the snow is an entirely new level of unfair and unjust suffering. Flakes of it flutter and fall in his hair, melts down his forehead in small bursts of sharp cold. He’s bleeding a little from a scrape on his face and along his arm, but he barely feels that. 

He needs to get to civilisation.

He needs to make a plan, a strategy, get back up again to hunt down the Mandarin. He needs to figure out what’s the deal with those bombless bombings. He needs to shake off this numbness, and he needs to call Rhodey and Pepper.

He needs to _ not _ freeze to death out in here in the woods-

The suit’s deadweight to him but he _ needs _ it, he’ll charge it - somewhere, somehow. He’s not leaving it, never. He’ll figure out the details as he goes; it’ll be fine, he’s a genius, smartest guy in the room even when the room is an entire state, and his thoughts move even faster than bullets and planes and the Iron Man suit in flight.

He’s got this.

With shaking hands he attaches a rope to the dead Iron Man suit, slings it over his shoulder, and starts his miserable hike.

* * *

Sitting in a car with her through the whole afternoon and well into the night doesn’t make Maya Hansen any easier to read. She watches the road like any sane driver does, keeping her hands on the wheel. Occasionally she drums on it with her fingers, impatient. Tony would hate being stuck in a car for hours on end, too. Hansen doesn’t exactly remind him of Tony, even then, but she doesn't remind him of anyone else _ either, _ and Steve’s got no other geniuses to compare her to.

And she_ is _ a genius. That much Steve managed to read between the lines of the newspaper articles.

She drives and he looks at her occasionally, but mostly out through the windows with a sort of melancholia. Countryside and miles of ditches filled with shrubs go by, pale and bleached of colour. Long stretches of grass, saffron and flaxen and unnatural plastic yellow. Then, desert. More bushes. They travel past smaller towns and larger cities, with the storefronts bursting with holly and red-green girlands, small plastic trees in green and silver, everyone trying to sell some Christmas cheer. Because it’s well into December, of course. Steve hasn’t been ignoring the calendar, really, but sometimes the months just all blend into one - even more so when he’s lived this year once before.

And before he jumped to this time, it’d been summer.

More barren fields pass by the windows, and Steve itches. He flexes his fists, stretches in his seat as much as there’s room for, and promises himself that he’ll take a run as soon as they’ve got the time for it - whenever that turns out to be.

Steve suggests they should stop at a motel in Oklahoma, after they’ve stopped there at a McDonald’s for food, and Hansen tells him no.

“Then let me drive,” he demands, and after a second Hansen agrees.

They switch places and continue onward, with Hansen sleeping in the passenger’s seat while Steve drives through the night into dawn.

He keeps his eyes resolutely on the road even as boredom makes all the signs and exits blend into one, and silently repeats to himself the events of this exact year in an effort to keep his concentration. 

_ I’ll only stay until Tony figures this Mandarin thing out, _ Steve promises to himself and his ghosts.

He can’t just - hang around here forever. That’s not the plan. It can’t be allowed to be the plan. He just came here because he’s… looking for a purpose. But that purpose can’t be here, because they already _ have _ a Steve Rogers in this timeline. He’ll help Tony a little, clear up any loose threads maybe, and then…

The crushing weight of an uncertain future.

Hansen wakes soon after they’ve passed the border for Tennessee, and spends the rest of the drive either absorbed in her phone or blankly staring out the car window.

Steve lets her be.

It’s dark again when they finally reach Rose Hill, where Steve’s knowledge runs out for now.

Tony’s here. That’s all he knows - that he fought someone here, and then he left - and that he’ll be here, right now, today. So young and so alive.

Ten years ago; today.

There’s Christmas lights strung over the buildings in Rose Hill, too, and when they get out of the car the ground’s covered in snow and slush. A brisk winter wind chills right through his skin and into Steve’s bones, and Hansen opens the trunk of her car, takes out two parka coats and tosses one to Steve. They dress themselves, silently zipping up their coats in tandem, and Hansen closes the trunk again with a final, heavy thunk.

Steve’s got a wallet with a driver’s license claiming he was born in 1980, Minnesota, as James Carter, and some cash. He’s got a few memories of news broadcasts and newspaper articles, headlines, some throwaway line his Tony once gave him. He’s got no plans.

He’s got no plans, and it’s December in 2012, and when he tilts his head back and looks up he can see the stars, can drink in the sight of a clear winter night sky free from New York City pollution, a few flakes drifting down. It’s like all the weariness from driving through boring landscapes for miles and miles somehow melts away in the face of it.

He’s been to space and to distant planets, but none of that compares to simply looking up at the sky, standing with both feet firmly on Earth.

“What now?” Hansen asks.

Steve doesn’t take his eyes off the sky as he replies, calmly, “We wait.”

* * *

Breaking into some random family’s garage: truly the height of Tony Stark’s superhero career, and his career as a countryside burglar. 

He deposits Iron Man on a sofa and has just started on fixing the chips he perhaps somewhat hastily implanted in his arms with some shitty garage tools, wishing JARVIS was online, for the company if nothing else, when some kid with a potato gun shows up.

To be fair, it_ is _ the kid’s garage.

But Tony really, desperately needs to fix up and charge the suit so he can fly back to California and prove he’s not dead, among other things, so…

Okay. He’s talking to the kid. He’ll figure something out.

He starts babbling about how to maximise the effectiveness of a potato gun, and then the brat shoots out a glass on a shelf with one shot, so whatever. Looks the the kid’s the smart kind.

“Hey kid,” he then says, after they’ve gotten those pesky introductions out of the way and Tony has finally thought of a logical, sane next step. “Where are your parents?”

His mom’s at work and his dad was shitty. Well, alright.

Tony is nothing if not a successful businessman though, so he makes a deal with Harley, negotiates some terms, gives the kid a fancy firework bully deterrent and hooks up the suit to a wall socket so JARVIS gets some juice, and then it’s not long before both Tony and the kid are out in town, looking around for the bombing site. Harley let him borrow some clothes, and Tony appreciates that immensely - not so much Harley’s chatter though, and even less how his questions prompt the - the _ anxiety _ attack, fine, Tony gets anxiety attacks nowadays. It’s not like the situation can get much worse, anyway, than being stranded out in Tennessee for Christmas with some random kid for back-up, playing at being a detective. 

-where was he before all this drama came in? Right! Okay, so he’s looked at the place of the incident now, the crater and the ashes and all the candles and flowers left out in the snow in memory of the five victims - and he’s got some thoughts, vague unformed ideas that could become anything with just a bit more data, but no real clues or theories, nothing solid-

And if there’s no more info to be had about the bomb itself… then maybe he should take a closer look at the bomber. Chad Davis, wasn’t it? One of their many, many war vets.

Tony puts his borrowed baseball cap back on his head, locks the memory of New York and wormholes away in a box in his head, and takes a deep breath. Anchoring himself to the present moment or whatever, even if the present moment is just him sitting on the sidewalk in some sleepy night-dark town with snow soaking through his pants, having collapsed here after his ungraceful anxiety episode, and he looks up at Harley Keener and asks, “So where’s Mrs. Davis?”

The kid shifts a little, still looking vaguely guilty, and says, “Where she always is. At the bar.”

“See?” Tony says, and points at Harley, gold star for you kiddo. _ “Now _ you’re being helpful.”

* * *

They ended up waiting at a table in a bar, Steve ordering a glass of eggnog just to be polite. Hansen is typing something on her phone but Steve’s not very interested - it could be something troublesome, yes, but he’ll deal with that when it happens, if it comes to that. He’ll never let down his guard again for as long as he lives, probably, but he’s not going to let himself start to jump at shadows either.

The locals in the bar all seem to be in good spirits. People are coming and going a lot, exchanging holiday greetings and calling out to friends. There’s a family eating at one table, a group of men playing cards at another. There’s a cosy background murmur of conversation, pleasant and unworried - no signs of trouble, yet.

His hearing is enhanced and it’s practically instinct by now, to listen for that tiny shift when the mood in a room turns, so he’s not too worried about anyone sneaking up on them.

He turns his empty glass this way and that on the wooden table, letting the lights filter through the angles of the glass into small drops of colour. Amber and red and white.

Hansen continues typing.

And then it happens - the change in the atmosphere which makes Steve sit up straighter and listen, a woman approaching a table where there’s an older woman and a man in red-blue plaid sitting and talking in low voices, and the man- no, wait, that tilt of the shoulders, the faint murmur of his voice, that’s_ Tony- _

The woman whips out a pair of handcuffs on reaching the table, at the same time as Steve raises from his own table and pitches his voice loud and clear as he says, “Is there a problem, ma’am?”

Hansen stops typing.

The noise level in the bar drops very noticeably.

The woman who’d approached Tony has a scar over her face, red hair cut in a haphazard bob and a nasty look in her eyes, and she sneers, “I’m with Homeland Security. This man is under arrest.”

She’s gripping Tony’s shoulder like she’s about to twist it out of its socket, and when Tony glances at Steve his eyes go wide for a fraction of a second before he smooths over his expression. Steeling himself. Calculating.

“May I see your badge?” Steve says, casually making his way over to them. Some of the locals are stirring, and the tired older woman Tony was talking to - she slides a folder off the table, so quickly Steve almost doesn’t catch the movement, and the folder slides beneath a table and disappears.

The scarred woman doesn’t notice that it happened at all.

“You the sheriff or what?” she asks, and doesn’t let go of Tony.

Steve wants to remove her with all necessary force, but instead he pastes on a thin smile and says, “I’m with SHIELD, actually. Now, your badge, please?”

Her lips quirk up into a hostile smile as she says, “It really didn’t have to be this way.” 

Then she pulls out a gun and Steve’s moving before she’s even pressed the trigger, the shot missing him by inches, and his speed visibly throws her for a second. In the heartbeat of stillness before she reacts, the locals quickly start screaming and scrambling away, and Steve knocks the gun out of her hand before she can do any more damage, restraining her quickly while Tony eels away, _ good- _

But the woman doesn’t struggle against him, instead she stands still and her eyes start to glow molten orange, Steve registering the danger and flinching away a second too late, feeling her breath erupt into flames as she opens her mouth, burning his cheeks as he jumps back.

_ Super-powered _threat, then, which means a whole different set of rules.

He lets her go, backing away to catalogue the way she moves, how strong, how fast, and he can feel how the fight seeps back into his blood. How his focus narrows down in a very specific way, finding targets and weak spots. It feels a little like time stands still, sometimes. Like it gets neatly divided to _ before _ and _ after _ his first move.

He moves. He’d prefer to incapacitate her rather than kill her, but after a moment of grappling and then breaking her wrists-

The bones are fucking reknitting and resetting themselves.

Enhanced healing _ way _ faster than Steve’s own, alright-

Then Tony yells something, and Steve’s eyes snap up to look before he can stop himself. Tony’s standing in the entrance to the kitchen and yelling, stupidly recklessly, “You want me? _ Come get me!” _

Steve cannot deal with- 

And then the woman’s going for it, lunging after him, and Steve curses as he leaps after her. He’s not able to get into the kitchen though, because Hansen stops him just as he’s about to enter and _ are you kidding me, _ this is the worst possible time to get betrayed - and then there’s a great roar of an explosion as suddenly the kitchen violently catches on _ fire, _ and Hansen snaps, “Move, we need to _ go.” _

“Tony is _ in there-” _ Steve growls, panicked despite his many terrible years of experience seeing dear friends die in front of him, and Hansen interrupts with a loud,

_ “No, _ he’s not, there’s a back door. We set a trap.”

Steve stares blankly at Hansen, who grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him a little. “Tony Stark is fine! We need to leave before the cops show up. _ Move.” _

Steve snaps back to motion, belatedly, and quickly they make their way out of the burning bar, out into the street where people are running and yelling and pointing and, the worst crime of the entire 21st century, taking pictures. It doesn’t take long for that behaviour to stop though, as it turns out that the woman who Tony and Hansen conspired to blow up _ wasn’t _the only superhuman hostile in town.

* * *

Tony’s barely out of the bar when he spots another one of the Mandarin’s people, melting away merrily at the pillar that supports the water tower in town, and he thinks very eloquently, _ shit. _

He has just enough time to find a sturdy fence and hold the fuck on before the wave comes. Getting hit by a flood of cold water is never, ever going to _ not _ send spikes of fear through him, but okay, alright, he’s still kicking. The water’s retreating. The arc reactor’s still glowing in his chest. The terrorist guy is unfortunately also alive, however, and he’s holding-

A struggling Harley Keener.

Tony closes his eyes and breathes. Then he sets his jaw, opens his eyes and mouth and reminds the kid about that fancy bully deterrent from earlier, remember? _ Please. _

Harley does, and the white flash and little explosion blinds the guy for long enough that Harley can scram, which he actually _ does, _ Tony loves kids with self-preservation instincts - and then while the guy’s distracted Tony pulls up his scrap version palm repulsor scavenged from the suit and shoots the bastard right in the face.

The guy doesn’t get back up again.

Tony lets his head thunk back against the chunk of debris he’s lying in, has his leg trapped by, and heaves a shaking sigh.

-the sound of footsteps quicky makes him shoot up again, heart hammering, but it’s - it’s just Maya Hansen and the guy who might be Rogers, Rogers with none of that naïve youth left, and he really should’ve tested the truth of Rogers’ claim back in Malibu where he actually had any _ equipment _ shouldn’t he have, and hey, look, there’s Harley too.

“Tony,” Rogers breathes, and jogs up to him first. He pulls away the steel beam pinning Tony down with one hand and then offers the other to Tony, who obviously eyes it suspiciously for a second, but hell, it’s been a night.

It’s been a year.

Tony takes the hand, and it’s just a warm human hand and no ulterior motive, and Rogers simply pulls him up and almost looks like he’s going for a hug - but then he reconsiders, and settles for putting both hands on Tony’s shoulders for a moment instead, rubbing a bit. “You’re wet,” he then states.

“Water tower,” Tony replies. Rogers does look very much like Cap from up close - but what would a time-traveler be doing around _ here? Now? _

Rogers looks at him, then strips off his parka and settles it around Tony’s shoulders with not even a second of hesitation.

(it’s warm and smells faintly of Rogers’ old man cologne)

“Stark,” Maya says as she reaches them, Harley trotting along right behind her. “I see you’ve met some of my… patients.”

“Your what?” Tony says, but he’s already connecting the dots and thinking about what Maya blurted out back in his mansion in Malibu, _ ‘my boss is the Mandarin’, _ and how that thing Maya was working on - Extremis, that’s it - it was supposed to regrow limbs, but the plant in the hotel room in Switzerland that Happy messed with ended up exploding- “Nevermind,” Tony says quickly, before Maya can start formulating an answer. He’s got it now, and he _ needs _ to talk with her. “We need to-” Tony looks down and says, _ “Harley.” _

“Yeah?” he says. He’s less sopping wet than Tony, but not by much. It’s freezing out here, snowing a little, and it’ll only get worse.

“You should go back home, kid,” Tony tells him. “Adventure’s over, we’re done here. Soon your mom’s gonna get worried.”

“I can’t go home _ now,” _ Harley protests, widening his eyes entirely on purpose. “What if there’s more of these lunatics out in town? I’ll be _ defenseless.” _

“You’re right,” Tony says, and turns to Rogers. “Rogers here can be your bodyguard, can’t he?”

Harley looks long and hard at Rogers. Then he asks, “Are you an Avenger?”

“I’m Captain America,” Rogers says in that steadfast and sure way only Cap could manage, that Tony’s starting to love just a little even though younger Rogers is a fucking prick, and alright. Maybe he _ was _ telling the truth about being Steve Rogers from the future.

(or maybe he’s not and Tony’s letting his guard down only to be betrayed-)

So, yeah. Tony’s still absolutely going to run tests on him.

“Cap doesn’t have a beard,” Harley says suspiciously, eyeing Rogers doubtfully.

“Not on TV,” Rogers agrees. He explains, “I’m trying out some new things.”

“It looks bad,” Harley then says, full of judgement, and Tony feels a little offended on Steve’s behalf. Rogers looks _ great _with a beard. Less boyish now, less judging square-shaped jaw, and more… rugged. 

“Thanks,” Steve says flatly.

“Guess you’re okay,” Harley decides, finally, though that might just be because Tony knows he’s got some more tricks up his sleeve. Either way, Steve then has to escort Harley Keener back to his house on the outskirt of Rose Hill, which leaves Tony and Maya alone together in the wreckage of the water tower.

And Cap’s parka coat is very nice, but that still doesn’t change the fact that water has long since soaked through Tony’s shoes and it’s like 22 degrees Fahrenheit out here.

“I have a car,” Maya tells him.

“Brilliant,” Tony says, cheerfully, and hopes that if Maya wanted to pull a gun on him and reveal that she’d been working for the Mandarin all along then she’d already have done so, and follows her back down to the street. Her car is grey and nondescript but with less trash in the backseat than he expected, and she sits down in the driver’s seat so he takes the passenger’s.

Immediately after slamming the door closed she leans down to get a handbag from the space beneath her seat, and Tony watches as she pulls out an old scrap of paper from the bag, then holds it up. It’s a nametag, Tony realises.

“Okay,” he says - then stops.

It’s _ his _ nametag, from the conference in Switzerland.

She flips it over and it’s got calculations scribbled on the back.

“I need your help,” she says. She doesn’t plead, beg, or ask; she simply states it like fact. Proud to the end. Her brown eyes are hard like steel.

Tony holds up a hand and curls his fingers a little, and she gives him the note. He reads it quickly, then again, more slowly-

He weighs his choices carefully, because he always does. Just because he does it in mere seconds doesn’t mean that he _ isn’t _ putting a lot of very careful thought into decisions like these, it just means he thinks fast, and of course he does, he’s a _ genius. _ And he thinks about Pepper, Rhodey, Happy and Steve’s disappointed faces, in that exact order - versus what kinds of protection he could give Earth with _ this, _ if this beautiful thing just got rewritten and reworked like Maya seemed to have wanted it to go instead of used as a goddamn _ terrorist _weapon, how terribly crude-

The Avengers need this. The_ Earth _ needs this.

He wets his lips and asks, “You got any more notes on Extremis to share with the class?”


	3. Chapter 3

Steve isn’t bothered by the cold or the snow, but still he keeps shivering. Finding Tony lying amongst the rubble of the water tower, wet and bruised and with blood on his face, eyes closed, not even able to tell whether he was breathing or not from a distance- Steve never wanted to find him like that again. He knew, knows it’s a highly unrealistic wish, but he doesn’t care. And Steve knew, _ knows _ that Tony will survive through whatever may come in the following weeks no matter what - unless Steve literally kills him himself, Tony won’t die. This timeline is close enough to Steve’s original one that he can be sure of that, ought not to worry.

Still wasn’t fun to get hit by a nasty flashback of Tony’s dead body, though.

He came here to - well, return the stones, but also to check up on his friends. He came here to maybe… help Tony a little. Make some amends. Nothing that would tear the timeline apart, just… just something to make up for what Steve did. So that when he leaves again he won’t feel crushed by guilt for doing _ nothing, _yet again.

He wants so much but he can allow himself to have so little.

But if he can only give Tony _ something _ good...

“So,” Harley says, after they’ve gotten back on the main street and away from the water tower rubble. He sneaks a look at Steve. “Why are you and Iron Man out here anyways? Did’ya come here to find those people who destroyed the water tower?”

“Kind of,” Steve answers vaguely. “Did Iron Man tell you why he was here?”

“He just wanted to know more about Chad Davis,” Harley says. “Some vet who blew himself up and killed five people,” Harley explains. “And then he needed to charge the suit, because it was all out of power. We put it in my garage.”

So _ that’s _ where Tony’s suit went.

Well, Harley seems like a good kid, though a bit reckless. He’s still soaked from being too close when the water tower went down, and he’s apparently been helping Tony a bunch. Are _ all _ ten-year-olds this fearless? 

...Though Steve can’t exactly judge him for that, can he?

“Thanks for helping him out,” Steve tells him sincerely, and Harley gives Steve an... _ assessing _ look.

“Okay,” Harley says slowly. He fiddles with his mittens and says, “Hey, are you and Iron Man like, good friends? Like do you hang out together a lot and stuff?”

“Not - that much,” Steve admits. “But - I’d say he’s my friend, yeah.”

Harley stops at a crossing, unexpectedly, just to look at Steve like he’s sizing him up. Then Harley starts walking again, and says, “So you know about the - the panic attacks? Right? Hey, you fought in a war didn’t you? Do you like, have uh… PTSD?”

Steve processes what Harley said for a few seconds. He - well, he didn’t know that. But there’s a lot he doesn’t know. He decides to talk to Tony later, and at last says haltingly, “I… don’t think so.”

“Iron Man said that too,” Harley says, sounding very unimpressed. “But I asked him about New York and then he just freaked out, and…”

Harley sniffs and rubs at his nose, and Steve turns the words over his head and thinks, oh.

“I’ll look out for him,” Steve quickly promises. “Don’t worry, Harley. I’ve got his back.”

“‘Cause you’re Cap,” Harley says, sounding like he agrees. They take a turn past a house surrounded by a hedge decked with Christmas lights, coming up on a badly asphalted road, and then Harley stops and tells him, “This is my street. You can like, go now. Bye.”

The kid waves at him very pointedly. Steve says, “Well, alright. Uh. Please be careful, listen to your mom, and remember to always-”

“Bye!”

Steve chuckles as Harley runs away, and then feels how his sober face slowly comes back, smile going stiff. Right, he’ll need to find Tony and Hansen again - best bet is probably to go back to Hansen’s car. He doubts either of them would want to loiter around outside in this weather for no reason. Steve doesn’t want to either, and he’s not even cold anymore. So he’ll find them and then he’ll _ have _to talk to Tony, because he told Harley he would, and because he needs to let Tony run those tests, and because-

He wants to talk to Tony.

He _ needs _ to talk to Tony.

* * *

Tony Stark and Maya Hansen are, in fact, sitting in Hansen’s car when Steve gets there. When they notice Steve’s approaching, the both of them set aside a bundle of papers that they’d been animatedly looking at, and Tony’s eyes don’t really focus on Steve’s face as he looks down vaguely… guiltily.

Steve, very deliberately, decides to just trust him here.

Hansen doesn’t have much of an expression at all, but she gestures at Steve to get in the backseat, so he does. There’s not that much stuff back there - a few boxes and a quilt - and Steve easily makes room for himself to sit there, while Tony exclaims, “Cap’s maybe evil clone! You’re back, Harley’s all delivered back home, fantastic. Did I mention earlier that I really want to run a few tests on you, because I really, really do-”

“Okay, yeah, I know,” Steve says, gently cutting Tony off. “But first we need to… actually, where are we heading next?”

It takes a moment before anyone answers.

“Killian has a mansion in Miami,” Hansen then confesses. “We’ve been doing some tests there.”

“Is that so?” Tony says, unhelpfully.

“Alright,” Steve says. “Shouldn’t we be heading there?”

Hansen wordlessly puts the key in the ignition and starts the car. As soon as the car radio turns on it starts playing a mournful Christmas ballad, and Tony scowls and immediately changes the channel.

“But first-” Steve says quickly. “We should find a clothing store, because I know your clothes must be soaking wet, Tony.”

“I’m fine!” Tony immediately insists, and then he adds, “We’re wasting time.”

“It’ll only take five minutes,” Steve says, making sure to keep his voice gentle even though Tony’s being frustrating, because Tony’s his friend, he doesn’t want to hurt him ever again, or watch him hurting. He messed it up enough in one life already, and he’d vowed to himself then, _ never again. _

Of course he’ll trust Tony. Not blindly, but nevertheless.

Whatever he does together with Hansen is not any of Steve’s business. It isn’t.

“You okay, Tony?” Steve asks him carefully, and watches the side of his face he can see from the backseat.

“Always,” Tony replies, and turns his face further away.

* * *

Aimlessly hitting various suspect-looking bunkers in the Middle East is kind of a waste of time, if you ask Rhodey, but his superiors had reasoned that since they didn’t actually know anything about the Mandarin’s whereabouts anyway, they might as well send Iron Patriot to go looking anyway, because apparently that’s the best the U.S. armed forces can do.

Bless Tony though: the inside of the suit is always at the perfect temperature, which makes this mission a lot more comfortable than the last time he was out here. He’s got a little map of the region on the HUD with various suspicious locations marked out and you know, at least it’s a straightforward and simple job. Better than handling the press.

Another one of his targets is just up ahead, and Rhodey starts to carefully bring the armour down to ground level.

Iron Patriot lands on the outskirt of a town in another desert area. There’s a few bushes and scraggly trees a few feet tall at most around; but mostly sand and rocks. The houses are all low, one-storey things built of out dusty stone with similarly dusty walls and fences.

Rhodey stays well away from the streets and heads over to where his HUD’s pointing him, one clunky step at a time - sand in the joints is such a pain - and it’s easy to wrench open the door of the umptenth nondescript building just like this and head inside to where there’s a bunch of heat signatures… who all turn out to be a bunch of innocent women. Rhodey steps aside and lets them head outside, but one of them tugs at his arm so he turns to ask her if she needs any help-

-but when he turns to her she’s ripped off her niqab and she’s white, her eyes are glowing _ orange, _ and she attacks him with some kind of goddamn fire breathing, reminding Rhodey of how _ very _ much he despises enhanced hostiles, and before he has to time to blast her off she slams him into a wall with a truly nasty amount of strength and bricks crack and Rhodey’s head snaps against the back of the helmet so bad he swears he can _ feel _himself start to lose consciousness.

_ Ah shit, _ he thinks fuzzily before everything fades to black. _ Not the suit again. _

_ Sorry Tones, looks like I won’t make it to Malibu for Xmas this year either- _

* * *

They stop for food and to switch drivers twice, driving through the whole night, but when it’s Steve’s turn to drive and he judges that they’re about halfway there, he finally makes them stop so that they can get some rest. Sleeping in a car never makes you any less exhausted, and neither Tony nor Hansen have any supersoldier serum helping them stay awake.

They’re in Georgia when Steve spots a motel and pulls over, and they check in at a few minutes past 8 AM, with both Tony and Hansen protesting against this decision in their own ways. Tony complains loudly and whines about how unnecessary sleep is, while Hansen pulls Steve away just after exiting the car and tells him urgently that ‘they can’t afford to waste any time, what’s wrong with you?’

Steve tries his best to ignore the both of them, and gets them two rooms: one private just for Hansen, and he himself can share with Tony; the room’s got two nice beds and everything. 

He lets Tony shower first, and when Steve then comes back from his own, modestly wrapped in a moldy motel bathrobe, Tony’s on the phone and talking to Pepper. It’s actually _ Steve’s _ phone, as Steve realises after a few seconds of unintentional eavesdropping, but that doesn't matter. What matters is how Tony’s eyes are suspiciously shiny in the glare of the motel lights, how he keeps nervously drumming with his fingers on the bedcovers - but how his little smile still looks so genuine and soft and relieved.

God, it feels like cheating, the fact that Steve even knows how to decipher his expressions. Like forbidden knowledge, because Steve _ shouldn’t be here. _

This isn’t his time. The forties wouldn’t be his time either, nor the seventies - not even with Director Carter, _ especially _ not because of her - nor is 2012 where he’s supposed to be. Probably not even year 2023. He doesn’t belong to any time or place anymore; he’s like a ghost. Haunting the country - or maybe he’s mostly just haunting the Avengers, looking for a hint of home in this bygone time.

What difference is there really between a ghost and a time-traveler?

He’s a relic of a time he can never return to.

Tony doesn’t want him, probably doesn’t even _ need _ him on this little roadtrip to save the country.

Pepper Potts is _ everything _ to Tony, and Steve is just an intruder, an interloper and a fool, and why did he ever think that he’d find any answers worth looking for _ here? _ His purpose isn’t waiting here, of course it’s not. He ought to leave and try his luck in a different decade-

When Tony hangs up, the sudden absence of sound makes Steve startle, and then Tony’s looking up at him with a raised eyebrow and Steve - Steve has to say something.

He forces out a nervous, “Your girlfriend’s been worried, huh?” and tacks a badly done chuckle at the end of the sentence, like that’s somehow going to make him look like less of a loser. Hide the miserable squeeze of his heart.

Tony doesn’t notice Steve’s awkwardness though, because he’s too busy inspecting his shoes. “We broke up,” he then says. Steve - takes a breath. “But Pepper has still been worried of course, because we - because I’m _ me, _ you know, and… I’m so glad she’s not dating me right now.” He runs a hand through his hair listlessly. “Because, if she _ were _ dating me, then she’d be all caught up in this mess and I don’t-”

Steve thinks, _ oh lord what have I done, _ and Tony drags in a shaky breath and says, “I don’t know what I’d do without her. She’s - my best friend. She and Rhodey. When I first started out being Iron Man she was the _ only _ one who was on my side, and I’m just…”

He trails off, then suddenly jerks and looks at Steve. “You,” he says and points at him, “are not allowed to snitch to any magazines about this, this talk. Okay? This was a heart-to-heart that I, foolishly and accidentally, had with you - _ privately. _ In confidence-”

“Hey, no,” Steve says quickly, rearranging his facial expression. “Of course I won’t tell anyone. I’m - honoured that you even told me, Tony.”

-and baffled. Tony and Pepper _ aren’t _ together? Weren’t they together at this time? Steve’s almost sure they were, and… they’re just meant to be, right? Right. Destined for it. This timeline can’t be that different from Steve’s original one; of course Tony must be missing Pepper.

“Thanks, Cap - Steve, whomever you are,” Tony tells him. Then he sighs and falls back onto to bed, sprawls with his feet still on the floor. He closes his eyes. “I appreciate it.”

Steve nods, and tries to get ready for bed as silently and discreetly as possible, resisting the frankly ludicrous urge to try and tuck Tony in, or to let his eyes linger on the line of his throat, revealed by the opening of his bathrobe.

Even if Tony and Pepper aren’t together right now… look, they had a daughter, Morgan, and Steve’s not going to erase her from existence just because he’s suddenly getting slammed with all that yearning for Tony once again. He’s _ not. _ He’d never. Even if this timeline is turning out to be a bit different from his own, well - he’ll just tough it out anyway.

Feeling dead inside? Walk it off.

* * *

The thing Tony doesn’t tell Steve’s sexier clone is that he can’t get ahold of Rhodey.

-Okay, fine, Tony is _ also _ not telling Steve about what he’s working on with Maya, but that’s just for now. He’ll mention it once it becomes relevant. And, you know, if Tony’s overly trusting instincts are wrong about ‘Steve Rogers’ and he _ does _ turn out to be an evil Life Model Decoy instead or something, then it’s best if Tony doesn’t show all his cards just yet. So he won’t tell Steve about Extremis.

But Tony’s sweet-pear not picking up his calls five times in a row? That… is worrying.

While Steve fetches brunch for the three of them and Maya’s in the shower, Tony tries to call Harley too, who thankfully _ does _ pick up. “Hey buddy,” Tony greets him, leaning back against the headboard. “How’s the suit doing?”

“It’s charging,” Harley says, and then there’s a rustling noise as he moves. “It’s at - uh, 25%.”

“Great! That’s good, is JARVIS awake?”

“Hold on,” Harley says, and then there’s a click and JARVIS’s wonderful familiar British-accented voice says, “Hello, Sir, I take it you’re trolley?”

“I’m - wait.” Tony holds up his phone so he can frown at it, then puts it back to his ear and asks, “JARVIS, are you functioning alright?”

“Most of my systems are operating correctly if inefficiently, but at the end of a sentence I always seem to say the wrong cranberry.”

“Ah,” Tony says, _ so the suit’s out for now, _ and rethinks his plans for a second. “Just charge up for now then, J. I’ll talk to you later.”

“I was most pleased to hear back from you,” JARVIS agrees. “Take care, software.”

After that not very uplifting status update Tony tells goodbye to Harley, please remember to do this and that, _ thank you _ \- he _ needs _to get the kid a whole new garage for Christmas when this is all over with, or something - and hangs up the phone just as Maya steps out of the bathroom, already dressed and toweling off her long dark hair.

Tony looks at her and finds himself thinking about Extremis.

They don’t have the time to do anything though, because Rogers gets back at about the same time, carrying a few take-out restaurant plastic bags. They sit down on one of the beds and eat in silence for a few minutes, until Tony no longer feels ravenous and sets down his sandwich to say, “Cap. JARVIS isn’t functioning right so I can’t actually run any of the interesting tests on you right now, but-”

Fuck, there’s so much Tony has to do. Really, whatever Steve’s got going on isn’t something Tony should care about _ at all _ right now, and so what if Cap’s a time-traveler or a clone - as long as he’s helping, Tony doesn't care. (and to be honest he’s almost convinced himself that he actually _ is _an older version of Steven G. Rogers by now because his personality sure is on point - though where is the shield? If he somehow loses it in the future Agent Coulson will weep-) 

“Later,” Steve says. He makes an interesting expression, oddly sad, before looking down at his legs. “I’m going to stick with you for a little while, anyway.”

“Fine,” Tony says. “Then let’s check out and get this show back on the road.”

Rhodey will probably call back, anyway. Maybe he just left his phone somewhere for a bit, and soon he’ll find those missed calls from Tony. Right.

* * *

Steve reminds himself, yet again, that he’s going to leave, say goodbye, disappear into the night after Tony’s finished with the whole Mandarin business.

And since he’s not exactly _ told _ Tony that he’ll be staying here forever, or anything similarly false, he’s not really lying to him. Steve’s not going to accidentally make the multiverse collapse by making a stupid decision, so if Tony ever asks him about the future, he won’t tell him anything. He’s got a good reason for why he can’t stay, and he’s got a good reason to be a little vague about everything. Though now that he’s thinking of it-

“Tony,” Steve says, glancing at the backseat where he and Hansen are looking at those papers again. Tony glances up, their eyes meeting for a fraction of a second before Steve refocuses on the road. “How come you haven’t asked me anything about the future? I mean, I’m glad you haven’t, but since being a ‘futurist’ is your whole thing...”

“You wouldn’t tell me anyway, would you?” Tony guesses. “You being here in the first place has already changed things so much that any information you have may not be worth much. You could lie to me, too, so there’s that. And also-” there’s a pause, and then Tony sighs. When Steve chances a glance at him his face is full of longing, but his brows are scrunched with irritation. “Don’t tempt me.”

Steve clears his throat. “Alright.”

The way this trip is going, they’re inevitably going to arrive in Miami smack in the middle of the night, but Steve still doesn’t regret that they stopped to rest for a bit. Taking care of the team has always been his responsibility, and even if he’s done quite badly at it, it’s a useful habit for making himself rest or eat too.

Tony and Hansen keep working on those papers for almost the whole ride, and when it gets too dark out to see they switch on those lights on the car’s ceiling and continue their work anyway. They talk too, low murmurs about formels and values Steve doesn’t understand, and after a while he kind of stops listening, content with letting their discussion fade into ambient background noise.

Maybe he ought to be keeping a closer eye on them.

Maybe he ought to be more vigilant, less trusting.

But this - this isn’t his time, and he _ wants _ to trust Tony, and he’s the one driving the car. _ That's _ his job for now: getting them safely to Miami. So, that’s what he’s going to do. That’s all he’s going to do.

* * *

Extremis is a thing of beauty.

Tony’s said it before, but: Maya’s vision that she’s carried with her all these years is beautiful; the unwilling suicide bombers hooked up on volatile Extremis are definitely not.

In the end it’s not that difficult to rewrite the virus and weed out the few errors that Maya had missed and Killian had added, and Maya’s help makes it easy. By the time they reach Miami it’s nearly done, on paper.

“I just need a little time in a lab,” Hansen says, and Tony thinks he hasn’t seen her with that creator’s light in her eyes since Switzerland. “So I can make these modifications, but then it… then it’ll be done.”

“Yeah,” Tony breathes, and they look at each other for one perfect moment of minds meeting, and then Steve says,

“We’re in Miami now Hansen. What’s the address?”

“It’s-” Maya stops, runs a hand through her hair. She’s almost grinning. “Get out. I’ll drive.”

She swaps places with Steve, and Tony gathers up all the loose sheets of paper and what-not, stuffing them away neatly. The truly vitally essential part is the paper he’s got in hand right now, and - and right, the last few edits he was working on. He writes the last few lines as Maya drives, gets an idea, and adds another line to it, and art is never completed only abandoned _ but this really needs to be done- _

“We’re here.”

Tony looks up as Maya’s door slams open, and Steve smiles a little at him, quickly hiding his frown when Tony looks at him. “Come on,” Steve says, like he knows Tony and maybe he _ does, _ and Tony glances at the papers one last time and thinks, _ almost, _ and then they both get out of the car.

They scout the area a little, and discover that the mansion is huge. It’s built in some pretentious old European style and there’s a lot of garden around it, lit up by a fuckton of lights, with fountains and statues, the whole shebang. There’s unfortunately also a bunch of security guys loitering around amongst the decorative vegetation, all dressed in suits and ties and armed with firearms, glints of metal hidden by the shadows. 

Tony was expecting something like that, obviously. At least all the technological security seems to be shitty or lacking, so that’s something.

And Tony’s got Captain America with him. _ That’s _ definitely a plus for Tony’s odds here.

“Right,” Tony says, as they’re clustered together behind a low stone wall a bit away from the mansion, using the darkness for cover. “We need to get inside.”

“We need to get inside,” Maya agrees. “My lab’s in there, all my samples are in there…”

“And the Mandarin?” Steve asks, always the task-oriented guy.

“They make the videos here,” Maya says, obviously more interested in getting to her lab than in talking about the Mandarin. “This is Killian’s main base, everything of any worth should be here.”

“Right,” Steve says, looking down at the courtyard in front of the mansion again. “The security-”

“Shouldn’t you have your shield?” Tony interrupts.

Look, he’s been getting distracted by Maya, and Maya’s work, and the fucking Mandarin and his terrorists, and trying to call his friends and not crash the suit and a million other things he’s always got to worry about, like whatever threat looms behind the portal that was in New York, claws and teeth bared and the Earth’s _ defenseless- _ but. Whatever the deal is with Steve - is maybe not the most urgent thing, but it _ could _ be.

_ Is _ he Steve? If he isn’t, then _ what _ is he? Is he really from the year 2023?

_ Why is he here? Now? _

Is _ this _ when Tony fails, when they start losing the fight? Will the world be invaded again and he’ll be powerless to stop it? Is that it? _ Is that why? _

The more Tony wants to trust Steve the more fucking _ scared _ he gets-

“I gave the shield away,” Steve tells Tony, like that’s not a completely earth-shattering statement. He _ gave _ it away? To _ who? _

_ Don’t ask, _ Tony tells himself. _ Don’t don’t don’t. _

“What are you even here for?” Tony snaps. “Are you here to stop me from fucking something up so badly that humanity loses the war, or _ what-” _

“You know about the war?” Steve snaps, focusing on Tony with almost scary intensity. They’re sitting on the lawn outside Killian’s stupid mansion in the middle of the night, with hostiles surrounding them on all sides, but _ this _ is when Tony starts losing it. Goddamnit-

“What war!” Tony throws up his hands. “So there _ will _ be a war! See, this is why I have fucking - PTSD, because of New- because of-”

The darkness around them feels suddenly crushing, like he’s underwater.

Like he’s underwater and all Steve’s words turn to muffled nonsense, and above them looms the night sky with the moon and the stars and nothing but a paper-thin layer of atmosphere and ozone between them and the abyss.

Hundreds of warships, gleaming oily black and lit from behind by the light of a star millions of light years away from Earth, but they made a portal once and they _ can do it again _ they will do it again they’ll be _ back- _

Someone’s telling him to breathe.

_ Fuck, _ Tony thinks and curls over his knees with his face down to look at the grass, the dirt, safe safe home you’re so weak, _ fuck- _

“Hey, hey, hey,” Steve’s saying, hovering right next to him, “Um. Can you try to breathe with me? I’ll count for you, see, here we go-”

Then Maya starts counting, slowly and calmly, and Steve syncs his breathing up so Tony tries to follow, and okay, okay, _ shit, _ that was mortifying on every single level. He's getting his breathing back under control _ as it should be _ but he can’t make himself look up, can’t make himself look at Maya and Steve’s faces, or up at the fucking bottomless sky of dread.

“Just breathe,” Steve tells him, softly. “There you go. You’ll figure this out Tony, I know it. I believe in you.”

He latches onto that.

Tony didn’t even know anything about Steve could be soft, for _ him. _ Steve’s all about that disapproving look, that stifling pat on the shoulder, parade rest and squared jaw and _ god _ did Tony want to deck him with his own shield, at first. Steve was so young and stupid and stubborn, and he was old, he was _ ancient, _ he was famous, revered and respected before Tony was even born, he was always fucking _ right. _

You just can’t win against a guy like that and Steve didn’t want to truce, either.

“Are you feeling better?” Steve asks him. Tony doesn’t answer, can’t make any sentence structure or sass happen, so Steve says, “Is it okay if I touch you?”

“Sure,” Tony says, tonelessly. 

He’s focusing all his energy on not thinking about space.

Then Steve moves closer and puts a tentative hand on his back, starts slowly stroking along his spine and Tony focuses on that, the solid warm hand on his back and nothing else. How gentle these big hands can be, when not curled into tight fists.

Abruptly he feels almost choked up, missing Pepper and Rhodey and Happy and the feeling of _ not _ being on edge 24/7, of just _ having a break _ from being insomniac and manic and always with one foot in the workshop and full of caffeine. 

But he can’t stop.

There’s too much he needs to do and he must go on.

He’s the first and last line of defense and a war’s coming.

“Right,” he says, and sits up, forcing himself to face Steve and Maya. The both of them just look at him calmly, without judgement, albeit Steve definitely looks a bit worried, and for a hot second there he loves the both of them. “We need a plan.”


	4. Chapter 4

Pepper Potts has several sound reasons as for why she broke up with Tony.

Most of them don’t even have anything to do with the armours - but she _ does _ think that Tony needs a break, needs some time for himself _ not _ spent in the workshop. He needs to take better care of himself. He needs to stop obsessively building his suits and get some sleep, sometimes, instead. And she, well, she thought that maybe they could make that whole relationship and caring for each other thing _ work- _

Evidently not.

She’s the CEO of Stark Industries, she’s pregnant and hasn’t told the father because he’s been building weaponised flying suits of armour for_ months _in his garage, like Pepper wouldn’t notice, and now he’s on the run being hunted down by terrorists and calling her out of the blue after days of total radio silence, hiding and doing god-knows-what, and Pepper-

She tells the PR department she’ll be heading to that SI developmental meeting in Tokyo on the 19th of December, and they fix her schedule and make statements and tweet about it and meanwhile Pepper quietly prepares a jet and heads to Tony’s cabin in Canada.

-so that when the news about a suicide-bomber at the SI offices in Tokyo on December 19 hit, Pepper’s only sitting on the plush sofa in Tony’s house in Ontario and grimly watching the news. 

Rhodey’s not picking up the phone. Happy's in the hospital. Tony called her and he’s _ okay, _ he’s alive, but he’s fending for himself and wouldn’t tell her what he’s up to.

So if all that Pepper has is control of the Stark Industries empire, then she’s damn well going to rule that kingdom_ , _ come hell or high water.

* * *

They strike at 3 o’clock in the morning.

Steve goes first, creeping on soundless feet toward the building. He’s like some kind of large predator cat, silent, almost too fast to track, with superhuman reflexes. He’s taken down two, maybe three of the security guys before even a single one of them has realised what’s happening or started doing anything.

Tony and Maya follow at a distance, keeping to the shadows.

Steve leaps out from the dark, is briefly visible in the light of one of those stupid outdoor spotlights as he grapples with a guard, and then the guard slumps in his grip and Steve drops him, stepping back into the shadows again.

The whole maneuver took him five seconds to execute at the _ most. _

Tony looks at Maya, all _ can you believe this, _ but she’s only got eyes for one of the entrances to the mansion. She catches his eye and makes a sharp, cutting gesture - and Tony nods, quick, and they both slip away toward the door.

Maya punches in a code that Tony memorises, and the door clicks open and then they’re entering a dimly lit room full of trash. There’s shelves and mismatched furniture and boxes, and a winding staircase going down into a creepy basement - and of course that’s where Maya starts heading, good, great, just fantastic.

When Tony catches up with Maya, she’s got a gun and she’s standing in a basement full of lab equipment and plants. The room’s well-lit at least, which really highlights the concrete walls and floor and complete lack of chairs. There’s a bunch of doors and other openings out from the room, but the real prize is already here, on the tables. Computers and test tubes and more, Maya’s old and now useless notes-

“Maya,” says a voice, and Tony whips around. Aldrich Killian stands in the entrance to one of the corridors behind them, wearing a grey three-piece suit and sneering. The effect is kind of ruined by the flashlight in his hand. “And Tony Stark. Look what the cat dragged in.”

“Killian,” Maya says, tensely.

“Now,” Killian says, and drops the flashlight before peeling off his jacket. He takes out a gun from an inner pocket before carelessly throwing the jacket aside. “I might’ve believed you if you’d have had Stark here bound and gagged, but _ honestly, _ Hansen? Are you even trying?”

“That’s rude, Richie,” Tony quips. “Are_ you _ even trying with this place? Concrete floors, really?”

Tony moves closer to Maya, and Killian arches a brow. His eyes are glowing and he fingers the gun like it’s a toy.

He says, slowly as he stalks closer and Tony wants his fucking armour, “Shut up, Stark. I’d suggest you reconsider where your loyalties lie, Hansen-”

“Shut it down,” Maya snaps. “I can’t control Extremis, _ you _ can’t control Extremis, so shut the program down. _ Now.” _

Killian laughs. “‘Shut it down’? When I’ve got both you and Stark here? Don’t you even-”

Then Maya pulls Tony into a chokehold and presses something cold to his temple, and Killian freezes, and Tony just _ knows, _then and there with a cold dead certainty, that Maya’s holding the gun to his head.

He breathes through his nose and doesn’t move and tries to - _ think. _

If Maya’s playing this game then Tony needs to-

_ “Shut it down,” _ Maya hisses. “Stark’s the only one who’s got a chance at fixing Extremis. Shut the program down or I’ll shoot.”

“Maya-” Killian growls, and then he smiles with only teeth, raising the gun. “I don’t need him. Soon I’ll have the president in one hand and the Mandarin in another, all because Extremis works _ exactly _ as I want it to.”

Maya jerks them to the side but it’s too slow, too late, Tony’s constructed guns like that himself and they’re fast, easy to use and clean and reload, easy to kill with - because_ that was the point. _ And now the _ point’s _ punched through his ribcage and punctured a lung and it’s hysteria and internal bleeding that makes Tony’s breaths bubble as he sags into a table, tools and knick-knacks clattering to the floor-

He hears yelling.

The pain seems to intensify with every too-fast beat of his damaged heart, and his chest feels wet, then numb.

It _ hurts. _

He’s fighting it and fighting it but his eyelids have never felt this heavy-

* * *

Steve takes out all the security guards he meets, going around the lush lit-up garden and then proceeding indoors through the main entrance. He was meant as the distraction for Tony and Hansen to sneak away, but he’s still supposed to meet up with them at some point, so after getting inside the mansion he starts looking for them.

And he walks through rooms full of garbage.

It’s baffling - the mansion is a nice house, there’s sculptures in the garden and art on the walls, antiques standing around - with chips bags and empty bottles littered around them. Another room he stumbles through is quite obviously the ‘recording studio’, and it’s with some disgust that Steve breaks through the door to the next room and finds-

Two half naked ladies in a bed. They are very obviously far more than tipsy.

There’s yet more trash everywhere, what is _ wrong _ with these people, and then another door swings open and the Mandarin himself stumbles through. Or more accurately: the actor who’s playing him, and Steve’s disgusted, sure, but even then he can recognize that Trevor Slattery is not actually any kind of threat.

Steve asks him some questions, but he’s drunk, he’s - he’s working for the real Mandarin, he has _ no idea _ what he’s acting _ for, _and Steve’s done.

He’s not wasting anymore time here. He’s got to find Tony and Hansen.

* * *

Rhodey comes back to consciousness because someone’s trying to melt the suit.

He flails, and he’s trapped, he’s in a basement with a few hostiles and at least one of them is one of those enhanced fire-breathing assholes, and he’s got _ his hands _ on the _ suit. _ The HUD keeps warning Rhodey about _ rising temperatures, rising temperatures _ \- Rhodey snaps at it to not disassemble, _ do not, _ and tries to think.

They cannot get the suit. He can’t let them have the suit.

But since they’re apparently willing and able to fry him alive to get it, he’s not going to be able to keep it out of their hands for long.

Suits can always be tracked down, destroyed and rebuilt. The priority here is staying alive. The priority here is living to get out and get to Tony and warn him, so that they can stop these people - seems like Rhodey found the real Mandarin, after all - and to do that Rhodey needs to get out of this room.

The HUD blares another warning at him.

Rhodey takes a deep breath, braces himself, and gives the suit the command to open.

He leaps out and knocks over the enhanced guy, then lunges at the security guy closest to him. There’s a brief second’s struggle before Rhodey confiscates his gun and twists his arm, dropping him to whimper on the floor. The next guy Rhodey aims his gun at, carefully edging backwards toward some kind of exit, and before Rhodey turns and starts sprinting he shoots the guard in the leg to keep him busy.

In the corridor there’s no one, so Rhodey starts jogging, gun up and eyes scanning every alcove and door. At the end of the corridor is a set of stairs going up, and Rhodey takes them, coming up into a room with real tapestry and furniture and actual windows. It’s night outside, which doesn’t tell Rhodey much, but the inside of this house is starting to look distinctly... American.

Guesses, guesses.

Rhodey moves onward, finding a lounge and a kitchen that’s definitely seen better days, honestly, the look of this whole place reminds him of a frat boy party, and then in the corridor past those rooms there’s a _ guy. _ Rhodey trains the gun on him and orders, “Hands where I can see them. Now tell me, _ where _ is this place?”

The blond guy turns around, holding his hands up in an almost comical gesture, and says, “Colonel Rhodes, uh, I know this must seem very strange-”

Hold on. There’s something _ off _ about the guy. “You,” Rhodey says, cutting him off. “Who are you?”

“I-” the guy looks conflicted for a moment and then sighs. He’s being _ way _ too calm about being threatened by a gun. “I’m Steve Rogers from the future,” he then says.

Rhodey narrows his eyes.

The blond guy says quickly, “I know, I know what you’re thinking-” _ yeah nah he doesn’t _ “-but I’m with here with Tony and this scientist Maya Hansen? I’m looking for them, and I do not want to fight you Rhodes, but if you don’t let me-”

_ “Tony’s _ here?” Rhodey demands. Fuck whoever this guy’s supposed to be; if Tones is here then all Rhodey cares about is finding him. “Again, where are we?”

“We’re in Miami, this is Aldrich Killian’s mansion.” The guy sets his jaw and says, “Rhodes, _ please, _ they could be in danger, we have to find them-”

This could be a trap. An ambush. Maybe Tony isn’t actually here, and this is all a very elaborate charade for some godforsaken reason.

Or maybe it’s _ not, _ and Tones really needs help.

“Fine,” Rhodey says, but keeps his gun up. “You first, let’s go find them.”

* * *

Being held at gunpoint by James Rhodes isn’t even Steve’s biggest concern at the moment, though it really puts into perspective how much easier it was to win Tony over.

Maybe because of the missile attack. That really escalated things.

They walk around the mansion and find more bedrooms, a solarium and then finally a staircase leading downwards. They take it, with Steve walking in front and Rhodey behind him, still with one finger by the trigger, and at the base of the staircase is a murky concrete corridor. Nothing special, just maintenance doors and wires and cables dangling from the ceiling - but Steve halts nevertheless, because he can _ hear _ something.

“There’s someone down here,” he warns Rhodes before he starts moving, and Rhodes curses but follows him easily enough.

Steve jogs through the corridor and turns a corner, and _ there, _ on the cold concrete floor amongst lab tables heaped with plants and tech and medical equipment, are Tony and Hansen. Yet it takes but a breath for Steve’s relief to turn back into tense, rigid fear again - because Tony’s not moving and he’s hooked up the IVs and wires and Maya’s hands are slick with blood.

_ No. _ The force of the word is like thunder in his mind, he’s so angry-

No, Tony is not fucking going to_ die _ in a shitty basement in motherfucking _ Miami, _ he’s still got so much time yet to live, he’s got so much-

“Tony?” Rhodey asks, confused. He’s lowered his gun but the word is loud like a gunshot in the silence.

Maya’s head snaps up to look at them with wide eyes and then she’s saying, “I’m fixing it, _ I’m fixing him, _ I’m trying to stabilise him-”

“Who did this?” Steve demands, too harshly but he doesn’t _ care, _ he’s an _ Avenger, _ hurt what’s his and he’ll burn your fucking kingdom to the ground and salt the earth it stood on. If he’s losing Tony again then he’ll - he’ll tear whoever did this to him _ apart. _

The consistency of timelines do not _ matter _ in the face of Tony, small and vulnerable and dying.

“Killian,” Maya Hansen snaps. “Killian did this. You, Iron Patriot guy, help me get Tony-”

Rhodey rushes forward and helps heave Tony up on one of the tables, and Steve - fuck, Steve can see Tony’s stuttering breathing, he’s still _ alive, _ Steve’s got to help.

He can’t let this year end like this.

Steve and Rhodey get Tony as comfortable as they can upon the lab table, helps to attach and detach IVs and fetch things on Maya's curt orders, and when there’s nothing more for them to do and Maya slumps over the keyboard of her laptop and Rhodey clears another table just so he can sit by Tony’s side and hold his limp hand-

Steve turns away and sits down on the floor by Tony’s feet.

Tony can’t die. He _ cannot _ die, the timeline - it’d be-

Steve can’t lose him again. Can’t watch Rhodey lose him again, can’t think about Pepper and Happy, and Peter who’d never even-

Steve shakes his head, clears his throat again and again, and asks Maya, “This is… you’re giving him Extremis, aren’t you?”

“We’ve _ fixed _ it,” Maya says. “And this was my only choice, Captain.”

Steve bites back the remark he wants to spit out. He’ll have plenty of time to yell at her when Tony isn’t dying anymore, and if this can save him… If this will save him, then Steve just can’t bring himself to care about anything else right now.

* * *

He aches.

His insides feel bruised and too tender and his thoughts won’t cooperate. It’s all unruly. _ Disorganised. _ He wants to hit his alarm so he can go back to sleep, if he’s sick he can come in to the office later-

Awareness hits him like a slap to the face.

He’s on a _ table, why _ is he on table, he was with Maya and then Killian pulled a gun on them and... and ah. So that’s how it feels.

Another taste of his own weapons.

“Tony?” a voice asks, too loud too close, and Tony blinks and blinks. “Tony!” the voice again, familiar and fond and worried. _ Rhodey. _ Why is Rhodey here?

Tony forces his eyes open and discovers that he’s still in the lab, and Rhodey and Maya and Steve are impossibly all hovering around him and watching him, and Rhodey whispers, “I cannot _believe_ you,” and closes his eyes, squeezing Tony’s hand. Tony feels small and scared and _stupid, _stupid and vulnerable, here he got hurt again which made his Rhodey hurt too, for his sake. It’s not fair. Tony’s never wanted to hurt Rhodey and Pepper and Happy but he can never do anything right.

“Hi Jim,” Tony croaks. “Can’t believe you didn’t - bring flowers. Rude.”

“You son of a bitch,” Rhodey whispers. “I thought you were going to _ die-” _

“Why,” Tony interjects, hoarsely. “Didn’t you. Pick up my calls?”

“Lost the suit to the Mandarin’s lackeys,” Rhodey says. He doesn’t even sound mad about it, just keeps smiling down at Tony in a way that makes Tony feel deeply guilty.

“Tony,” Maya then says. She looks less teary-eyed than Rhodey, and she’s holding their Extremis notes from the car in hand. “This is a temporary fix. I injected you with a watered down version of Extremis to save your life, but you’ll still need to go to a hospital-”

“Can’t,” Tony whispers. “I need to - stop Killian.”

_ “Tony,” _ Steve says, finally stepping forward to growl, “You nearly _ died _ here on this floor right in front of us! You have to go to a hospital, you can’t even _ walk _ in this shape-”

But Extremis can rewrite biology and rewire brains and regrow _ limbs. _ Maya’s holding the notes right now, and if he can pull the suit into the loop too then he’ll be more than good enough to go, he’ll be invincible. He’ll be _ better, _he could fix his gunshot wounds and his damaged heart and he could make himself-

Into something better than flesh, better than himself.

Tony tunes Steve out and looks at Maya. “Can I?” he murmurs.

Maya’s eyes are dark as she frowns, but she hands him the notes and a pen. It hurts just to take the items and he can barely hold the pen, curled over on his side to press the paper against the lab table so he can write, but it’s only a few lines he’ll need.

Only a few lines.

“Tony-” Steve begins again, and Maya tells him to shut it.

“Tony,” Rhodey then says, gentler, “Tony, how many times do I have to remind you that you don’t have to do everything alone? You don’t need to fight this guy alone, Tones.”

“I know,” Tony says, trying to force his hand to write steadier by will alone. “Just-” and this is when it hurts. “Just trust me.”

When he’s done, he closes his eyes and the pen falls from his grip. He feels Maya take the paper back and then he can hear her argue more with Steve, questions from Rhodey, answers from Maya. Someone strokes Tony’s hair, and he concentrates on trying to breathe shallowly and without jostling any painful areas.

He drifts.

* * *

Rhodey looks worried, and Steve’s scowling. They watch in silence as Maya does her science, finishing with filling a syringe with some suspicious looking substance.

Steve grinds his teeth but doesn’t protest. She saved Tony’s life once; he’ll give her the benefit of the doubt here.

She injects the liquid into Tony’s neck then steps back, puts the syringe down. She detaches the last wires connected to Tony, so that then it’s just Tony lying on the table, pale and small and dressed in blood-soaked clothes. His chest rises and falls in movements almost too gentle to notice.

They wait, and Steve can feel the seconds ticking away with almost physical realness in his head-

Then Tony twitches, before jerking up from the table with a gasp, chest heaving, _ he should not be moving- _

-but before Steve can grab him, Tony looks up at them with a blinding_ grin. _

It’s crazy. Tony shouldn’t even be _ able _ to move but now he slides off the table with ease, standing up, stumbling a step but still there’s not even a hint of pain in his expression. “Maya-” he breathes, then drags a hand through his hair. His eyes abruptly look - wrong. His irises look almost black and he’s staring off into space, his face going vacant, and Steve’s heart beats angry and painful and scared.

“Tony?” Rhodey asks, and Tony snaps back to reality. He beams at Rhodey.

“I can feel it, _ everything, _ I can hear the computers- it’s amazing.” He laughs, a sharp unnatural burst of joy. “I can hear the arc reactor, I can feel- so much-”

“Don’t get greedy, Stark,” Maya tells him. “Too much data and you’ll keel over. Human brains aren’t made to directly link up to the network-

“I know, I know,” Tony tells her, vibrant with unholy joy. “Have I told you you’re a genius?”

“Yes,” Maya replies curtly, but then she smiles. “You might have.”

And Steve stands to the side and looks at Tony, his smile and his easy gait and how he’s _ alive, _ and Steve decides to just get over it. Whatever Tony’s done to himself - dangerous experiment or not - it _ saved his life. _ Steve can’t not be thankful - and he’s not going to push Tony away, distrust and discredit him. He wants them side by side and part of that, is to respect Tony’s decisions.

He doesn’t know what this modified Extremis is, but he’ll just have to believe in Tony being Tony, and_ listen to him. _

He’s learnt that much from the many mistakes of his original timeline, where one argument after another slowly broke the Avengers apart.

-And he can’t stay here forever. He’s leaving this timeline soon, leaving for some other nebulous future, and he’s not going to say goodbye by hurting Tony. Never again.

So when Tony turns to Steve, Steve tries to smile at him and says, “So, what’s the plan for the Mandarin?”

* * *

What they need is information.

And information_ sings _ in the air around them. The electricity in the cables in the walls and inside the ceiling lights hums like the wind, and data from the computers and lab equipment chirps and buzzes. An alert on Maya’s phone suddenly beeping feels like a drop of water landing on Tony’s hand, a blip in a sea of notifications, a drizzle of data-

Fuck, he _ needs _ the armour.

As soon as he realises that he wants it, he needs it like water and air, misses it like a lost limb. The chips in his arms and nanites in his blood link him to it but it’s hundreds of miles away and he _ needs _ it, he’s calling it to him, it’s coming.

With that done and the certainty of its arrival a comforting hum in the back of his mind, he turns his attention back to the mansion, and there’s so many computers in the building, cameras and phones. He rifles through them all, finds videos and time-tables and emails to employees - the lady he set on fire in Rose Hill was named Ellen Brandt, and the other guy’s called Savin - and dozens upon dozens of files-

“Tony!” 

He blinks and the data fades, and then it’s just Steve, blurrily coming into focus, standing in front of him and frowning. “Tony,” he repeats. “Did you find anything?”

“I found _ everything,” _ Tony breathes. “And, by the way Maya, your boss has seriously questionable taste in porn.”

“So what’s the Mandarin’s plan?” Rhodey asks, ever loyal at Tony’s side, and Tony needs to get him a house for Christmas; he makes a note to start looking into that and turns to Rhodey and says,

“Killian’s got the vice president working for him, and he’s going to use the War Machine suit to - I think kill the president? Some of the details were a bit vague there-”

“Jesus christ,” Rhodey mutters, dragging a hand across his face.

“Where’s this going to happen?” Steve prompts. “When? We need to stop it-”

_ -and, _ Tony wonders, is _ that _what Steve came here to fix? To stop president Ellis from being killed by the Mandarin?

“The president’s going to be aboard a plane with a bunch of military people, flying across half the country to Washington DC later today. War - uh, Iron Patriot’s supposed to be escorting them-”

“Yeah,” Rhodey adds tiredly.

“-and that’s when - I don’t think it’ll be Killian, probably one of his minions - will be taking Rhodey’s place, and backstabbing the lot of them.”

“So we need to get there to stop whoever’s piloting the Iron Patriot suit,” Steve summarises. He looks at Tony, frowning a little. “But you don’t have your suit.”

“Actually,” Tony says and grins. “I’ll have the suit here in about a minute.”

“You-” Steve shakes his head, but then he smiles a little. “Good. It’s good that you can call the armour back to you when you need it.”

Tony wants to just smile back at him like this is a date and they’re just about to get in the car home, but then he realises that _ hey, _ this is the perfect time to run those tests on Steve; they’re already in a lab and everything. He flicks on a few machines with only a thought and then reaches over to pluck a clean syringe from one of the tables, saying, “Hey, you know what? Can I run those tests on you right now, Cap?”

“I guess,” says Steve. (who might not really be Steve, but _ this _ is the moment of truth _ ) _

“Great!” Tony says, and comes over to draw some blood from Steve, who politely rolls up a sleeve. Maya just looks on quietly, too absorbed in the Extremis notes to care, while Rhodey raises an eyebrow at Tony.

“So, this guy,” Rhodey says. “You really think he’s a Rogers from the future?”

“He’s undeniably got the skill set,” Tony replies distractedly, directing Steve over to a corner of the lab so Tony can scan him. “His behaviour is a bit different, but he’s not acted with malicious intent on innocents even once, and he _ does _ look nearly damn identical to Captain Rogers. And if you stack those odds together…”

Rhodey hums. “Still, Tony…”

“Well, it’s worked out so far,” Tony says, instead of saying something reckless like _ ‘and besides, he’s really hot and competent, _ of course _ I kept him’. _

(He saved Tony back in the Malibu house. Almost the first thing he did after meeting him, was to save Tony’s life.)

So Rhodey squats down on the floor and watches as Tony scans Steve a few times, confirming that he’s an authentic human being with a heat signature that matches the real Steve Rogers, how exciting! Tony can almost feel the suspense rising. After that Tony gets the syringe with blood and some equipment so he can check his DNA. At that point pieces of the suit are starting to come flying in, so Tony calls over the helmet and a gauntlet to be able to check the database for DNA matches, but then-

“Sir,” JARVIS greets him, through the helmet and _ inside _ Tony’s mind in beautiful code, and for a moment Tony forgets to breathe because _ there’s _ JARVIS. Perfect and real.

_ Jay, _ Tony tells him with his mind, before JARVIS’s firewalls slam down and he tells him,

_ UNAUTHORISED USER. _

_ STATE YOUR- _

_ ...SIR? _

_ It’s me, _ Tony whispers in lines of code and thought, and he’s better than a computer, better than any old tech made by someone else could ever be, finally communicating face-to-face with JARVIS. 

_ THAT IS CERTAINLY UNEXPECTED, _ comes JARVIS’s reply. “I take it you’ve had a rather major upgrade?” J then asks dryly, voice coming through the helmet again.

Tony smiles at the HUD, a private smile only for his creations, and says, “You could say that, buddy.”

“I was quite worried for you, actually, but it seems I had no reason to,” JARVIS says warmly.

“Aw, you know I always pull through,” Tony says, and carefully doesn’t wince at the memory of bullets ripping through his chest. JARVIS doesn’t need to know about that. “Now let’s see - right, right, search for DNA matches to-” he holds the gauntlet up above the blood sample for a quick scan, _ “-this.” _

The reply is nearly immediate.

_ Steven Grant Rogers, _ JARVIS tells him. _ Also known as: Captain America. Born 1918, Brooklyn, NYC, USA. _“Would you like his medical history as well, Sir?”

Tony takes off the helmet, doesn’t even answer beyond a _ give me a sec, _ and just stares at - at _ Steve. _ Captain Rogers. That annoying, uptight, self-righteous, larger-than-life amazing hero who grew up and got… _ sadder. _ Just a little bit older, childish youth gone from his face, and he got a beard and tired eyes and big gentle hands and some kind of terrible, unfathomable knowledge of the future.

It’s true. _ Fuck, _ it’s _ true _. So if he really is from 2023, then that’s - ten years in the future. Guy’s got to be about 37 years old - and isn’t that a fucking slap in the face, that Steve’s almost caught up with Tony’s age?

He feels peeled open and too exposed all in a second, because no matter how many pieces of himself he’s handed to the press there’s only ever been a handful of people who’ve gotten close enough to see behind Tony’s armours and _ what has Steve seen. _ What has he _ done? _ He’s got ten years of knowing Tony with him, he could- _ know _ things.

Steve’s noticed his stare. “Tony?” he asks. “Are you done with your tests?”

Like it’s no big deal, he says that. He’d held Tony close in the dark after a panic attack and Tony _ had let him. _

And Tony had wanted to curl into him and whisper _ please. _

Extremis is a mere toy, _ this _ is what’s the really dangerous thing here; Tony’s complete inability to ever fucking be _ calm _ about his emotions, instead of always letting his stupid adoration blow out to even insaner proportions. Pepper left, they’re hunting down the Mandarin _ right now, _ this is the worst timing in the history of the entire world and Tony needs some fucking room to _ breathe. _

“I need a new shirt,” he blurts out. He _ does. _ The long-sleeved t-shirt he’s wearing is stiff and crackly with dried blood and it smells disgusting to Tony’s newly enhanced sense of smell.

“We’ll buy a new one,” Rhodey says, getting up from the floor. “We should probably get going anyway. Hansen? You good to go?”

“Give me a moment,” she says, and grabs a bunch of papers and other small bits, stuffing them into the pockets of her jacket. Tony armours up in the meantime, gathering up all the pieces, and when Maya’s done she rips out a couple of wires from the biggest of the potted plants and then snaps the stem in two. “Go,” she then snaps. “We have to hurry, out of the basement _ now.” _

“Did you rig some kind of _ bomb?” _Rhodey asks, but rushes after Maya nevertheless, Tony and Steve after them.

“You could say that,” Maya says, and they’re at the bottom of the stairs when the lab explodes, volatile Extremis making the plant self-destruct, and overlaid in Tony’s vision temperature readings and warnings start popping up, until he blinks them away.

Burning the evidence. Smart move, Maya.

“Okay,” Rhodey says slowly. “Tones, how long until the president’s flight?”

“About eight hours,” Tony replies.

“Alright,” Rhodey says. “That means we’re stopping for breakfast, and _ no, _ Tony, you can’t outvote me.”

* * *

As they’re getting out of the car by the street at some hole-in-the-wall type of restaurant in the city, Rhodey takes the opportunity to very smoothly and gracefully but nevertheless, it seems, with some amount of embarrassment, apologise to Steve for the whole gunpoint situation.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Steve tells him quickly. “It’s not my first time, and honestly, if I were in your place I’d have done the same…”

“Okay,” Rhodey says. “Glad that’s all cleared up. How come you don’t have the shield, though?”

Ah, the question. “I gave it away,” Steve says again, and thinks of Sam looking at him with that oddly _ knowing _ look, shield on his arm. In the forest by the lake house, a few weeks after Tony’s funeral. A time so distant now that it feels almost fake, made-up, plastic - like everything felt after he first came out of the ice.

But he’s not 26 anymore, and he thinks he’s finally starting to learn what _ matters _ in this life.

He’s not a genius like the others, but Steve knows this: you’ll have to treasure the time you spend with your loved ones, and take all the chances you can get.

“Hmm,” Rhodey says, looking at Steve. “You gave the shield away... but superheroes never do retire anyway, do they?”

“No,” Steve says, looking down and remembering the words of many different people. “I guess we don’t, as a people.”

“Hey,” Tony then yells at them. “What are you two standing around for, you promised to buy me breakfast, honey bee!”

* * *

The inside of the restaurant is narrow, with brick walls that try hard to be charming and a few tables with bar stools and armchairs, and in a corner a Christmas tree is crammed, lights strung over the branches. From a speaker hidden above the counter the same Xmas song as always is playing, and Tony pulls up the hood of his new sweatshirt and hunches low in his chair at the table they picked. 

The city is alive like Tony’s never felt it before.

He can feel a waitress texting her group chat in the back room, and feel the hum of the kitchen appliances, hear the buzz of the cashier’s phone in her pocket. If he strains his senses, he can feel a dozen office workers sending and receiving emails in the building next-door, feel the soft presence of the street lights outside, the neon signs and the sliding doors.

He tunes it out for the moment, tries to focus on his hands and on Maya and Steve sitting on the opposite side of the table. He scrapes a little against the wood of the table with his thumbnail, just enough to feel the weight of the table against his hand, to remember.

Rhodey’s still ordering, and they’re waiting.

If Tony closes his eyes he can feel/sense/hear all the wires in the building more keenly than the wood underneath his hand.

When Rhodey comes back he’s got a tray of drinks with him, and he sits down beside Tony and hands him - a mug of cocoa.

Tony gives him a flat look. “This isn’t coffee,” he says.

Rhodey just shrugs and says, “It’s the season for cocoa.”

And when the waitress comes with their order, it’s just plates and plates of pancakes. Caught in of those terrible moments of nostalgia for his late teens that Tony usually avoids like board meetings, he simultaneously wants to never ever let Rhodey leave him - _ and _ to get him as far away from himself as possible, where none of Tony’s enemies can ever hurt Rhodey. Both of those are stupid desires - Rhodey will leave whenever he damn well _ wants _ to, even though that seems to be shaping up to a _ never _ \- and Tony has never been able to convince him to think of Tony a certain way.

It’s just - it’s good to have Rhodey at his back again.

They eat their pancakes, and Tony coaxes Steve to combine all kinds of condiments on his stack just to see if there’s anything Steve _ won’t _ eat, and Rhodey and Maya share a very distinct _ look _ as Steve looks Tony dead in the eye before putting a bit of pancake soaked in mustard and syrup in his mouth.

Tony huffs and says he should add some blueberries, too, but his mind’s already in another location, and then he drains the last of his cocoa and pushes his plate away. He looks at the three of them, clearing his throat, and says, _ “Alright, _ lady and gentlemen, I’ve been thinking that the plan should be…”**  
**


	5. Chapter 5

The morning rush is in full swing when they exit the restaurant, the traffic flowing by on the street. Tony tries to ignore all the moving vehicles containing electrical engineering streaming past, and draws Rhodey into a hug before he and Maya head off in Maya’s car to carry out their part of the plan. Rhodey holds on to him and tells him to be safe. Tony dutifully tells him he’ll do his very best, of course, haha, and then lets him go.

After their car’s gone, disappeared into the multicoloured crush of traffic, Steve turns to Tony and says, “When was the last time you slept?”

“You were there,” Tony reminds him. “Also, I don’t need to sleep; I spent like an hour unconscious already. And I’ve got work to do.”

“You almost died,” Steve says, and there’s something wrong with his voice. He clears his throat to get rid of it, that little crack of human vulnerability, and chides him, “You should try to rest a bit.”

“Who died and made you the boss?” Tony snaps.

But Steve doesn’t bite back - he goes pale and looks away, ducks his head, and Tony feels something in his gut lurch as he thinks _ oh. _

“In the future, do I-” he begins to ask, but Steve cuts him off.

“No. Don’t ask. I’m not going to-”

Tony decides to forget about his decision not to look down the rabbit hole, to be a sensible being and not fall for addiction again, and asks, louder than Steve’s protests, “Are you here to save _ me?” _

He wonders how it happens, his Extremis-enhanced mind instantly conjuring up a dozen, a hundred different scenarios: it’s Killian, it’s a suit malfunction, it’s a car crash just like his parents-

“No,” Steve says, but almost gently. Tony stops thinking. Steve says, “You’re not - you’ll survive this just fine.” He swallows. “I guess you could say I _ am _ here for you, though.”

“Why?” Tony asks, childishly. He’s stopped calculating Steve’s behaviour, stopped trying to predict how this conversation is going to go. He wants only to have some kind of control back over the conversation, to understand.

“I gave the shield away,” Steve begins. “I handed over the title, the leadership, everything. Because I took one last mission, and it was - well, it involved a lot of time-travel. And after everything that’s happened - if no matter how long I spend here or elsewhere is just a second to them, I could spend _ years _ building a farm in the 1800s and they’d never know - _ then.” _ He lifts a hand like he’s going to brush his hair back, but drops it before getting more than halfway there. Tony can't look away from him. _ “Then, _ you know - I have the time. And I just wanted to see you, everyone, again…”

Tony knows with dead certainty, now.

In the future he dies, and somehow that leaves a lasting impression on Steve Rogers.

Tony wonders idly how it happens, again, but this time he allows himself to daydream, picture more far-off futures. He’s fifty years old and his heart finally gives up, but as he drifts off he knows he’s accomplished some good in this world. Or, Tony draws his last breath in his lab, killed by his own crazy genius, having gotten too ambitious in the end. Or perhaps: the army from behind the wormhole comes at last to Earth, but they’re too badly prepared and Tony goes down fighting on the battlefield with many others.

If he asks Steve will just clam up again, but the curiosity isn’t that strong to begin with.

Because Tony has always known he’d die soon; in college he thought his lifestyle would finally be what killed him, in his late-twenties and thirties it’d have been at the hands of one of all those people after his wealth and company, and after Afghanistan the options were endless. Obviously he’ll die in less than ten years, what else was he expecting?

-though since Steve’s here now, traveled through time just to see him again… Tony must’ve done some good before the end.

He feels a strange sort of relief at the thought.

It’s a confirmation: if you work very, very hard and never give up, then one day you might just have done enough.

“You wanted to see me,” Tony echoes, and then he pulls his scattered thoughts together to arrive at the shattering conclusion that, “You’re not staying?”

“No,” Steve admits. “I can’t stay, this isn’t my time. I… can’t.”

“Oh,” Tony says, and tries to feel less crushingly _ disappointed. _ He knew something like this was coming, but yet again he pulled a true idiot move and got attached! _ Splendid work there, Stark. _Right. Tony takes a breath, feels the arc reactor heavy in his chest, and says, “Well, anyway, I’ve got to call Pepper. Toodles.”

Steve nods and lets Tony walk around the block to make the call in private, and Tony doesn’t bother to tell him that he can make calls inside his head now.

He wants Steve in ways that aren’t even just sexual anymore - maybe that’s never been the cause. Maybe he could’ve fallen in love with the younger Steve Rogers, too. Or maybe-

It doesn’t matter.

_ Steve’s leaving. _ Steve will leave him, unless Tony can somehow convince him to stay, and for now - Tony needs to call Pepper. That’s all. That’s the biggest thing he needs to focus on at the moment.

* * *

If the location Tony managed to extract from the computers in Killian’s mansion is correct, then Killian and company are hiding out in the Roxxon warehouse complex in Georgia, for whatever reason that may be. What Tony wants Rhodey and Maya Hansen to do, is to travel up there and catch him with his proverbial pants down, while Tony himself does whatever secret part he’s planned out for himself to execute.

Since it _ doesn’t _ involve confronting the lunatic that almost killed him, Rhodey was content to just hug Tony goodbye instead of demanding to know what’s up, because most of the time Rhodey can actually count on his best friend to not be a complete idiot.

So they get in the car, and Maya starts driving them up to Georgia, and meanwhile Rhodey calls the Avengers.

“Hi, Natasha,” Rhodey greets her when she picks up, because the matter of the fact is that Rhodey hasn’t much bothered to hang out with any of the other Avengers, so she’s the only number he’s got. “You busy?”

“You in trouble?” Natasha replies, sounding idly curious.

“Not anymore,” Rhodey says, keeping his eyes on the road. From the car radio he can hear the faint strains of ‘All I want for Christmas is you’, and now he’s riding up to Georgia to fight Aldrich Killian and a bunch of enhanced assholes. He amends, “Kind of. I _ will _ be. That is to say, I’ve got a mission for you and the other Avengers, if you’d be interested…”

Natasha hears him out, asking a few questions but mostly sitting quiet. After he’s done briefing her, Natasha says, “Well, I suppose I’ve got to go tell the boys then. We’ll be there with a quinjet around four.”

The call ends before Rhodey can tell her he appreciates it, and he very much does. Rhodey’s no slouch, sure, but going up against a bunch of super-powered hostiles without a suit? Yeah, _ no _ thanks.

* * *

Tony thought about actually flying up there in the suit to catch the president’s plane hijacker first, but he doesn’t want to leave Steve to wait alone in Miami, with no way of even contacting him.

(even_ if _Steve’s leaving-)

So instead, Tony gets to demonstrate his excellent _ remote-piloting _ skills.

With Extremis it feels almost like actually being there in the flesh, even though he very much isn’t; the air rushing past the suit, the plane quickly coming closer on his radars, with a charming backdrop of perfect blue sky and ludicrously high stakes.

He gets there just in time to catch the Iron Patriot suit fleeing from the plane, and he reaches out with Extremis and manages to snag the operating system - the suit’s also being sent to the Roxxon Oil warehouse complex, _ apparently _ \- and in a second he’s got the suit under his command, opening a communications line to whoever’s in there-

An unconscious president Ellis.

Tony gives the suit commands to fly to the White House instead, and, thanks to JARVIS’s suggestion, adds a very quick note about the general situation for the president to read. Then he sends the suit off, grimly blasts open a hatch in the plane, and makes the suit climb into the besieged aircraft.

* * *

When Maya parks her car in the big deserted parking lot located some distance away from the Roxxon warehouse complex, there’s some nondescript trucks and what’s unmistakably the Avengers quinjet parked there already. Three people are waiting outside of the jet, one of them wearing bright eye-catching blue.

Oh man. Rhodey had almost forgotten Cap the Younger was with the Avengers.

Rhodey and Maya get out of the car, get their guns, then jog up to the three of them, and Natasha, wearing her usual black catsuit with her auburn hair in a tiny ponytail, lazily waves at them.

“Thanks for coming,” Rhodey tells them, nodding at Natasha. “I know this is pretty sudden…”

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” says Captain Rogers the younger. He’s so very blond and clean-shaven and - different. Except, maybe, he’s not. “We’re happy to help.”

“Let’s get to it then,” says Agent Hawkguy, friend of Natasha. He’s clad in black too, but his outfit’s customised for someone whose main weapon is a bow and arrows, which is a choice of weapons Rhodey doesn’t really get, but to each their own. “Chop chop.”

Maya and Natasha exchange a few words of greeting as they get moving, and Rogers looks kinda like he wants in on it too but is too shy to say something. It’s unexpectedly funny to watch, after having met the guy’s older counterpart. As the warehouse complex starts looming over them, however, Rogers seems to straighten up and pull himself together, and Natasha goes silent.

Further out Rhodey can see enormous crane-like constructions by the sea, and what looks like some kind of port - there’s large steel structures, chains and cables running from them, and industrial grade containers everywhere. In comparison the warehouses seem almost small. 

And the whole industry area is eerily quiet and empty of people.

After a quick conversation they split up into two groups, with the spies being one team while Cap tags along with Rhodey and Maya. They search the warehouses quickly - if there’s nobody inside they skip to the next one at once. After a few minutes Black Widow signals to them that they’ve found something, and so the groups come together again. United front. All hands on deck.

Inside the warehouse is a bunch of offices and, apparently, a group of people. 

“You said these guys breathe fire?” Hawkeye asks, checking his quiver.

“Yeah,” Rhodey says entirely humourlessly. “They can raise their body temperature high enough to melt metal, too, and just about regrow limbs.”

“Ooh, nasty,” Natasha says, quirking her eyebrows.

There’s a steel backdoor into the warehouse, which Nat makes Steve kick down. They enter the building next, with Maya and Rhodey hanging a few steps behind the Avengers and Cap in front. Rhodey and Maya have both got guns, but that’s no reason to pull an idiot move and get yourself killed on the proverbial frontlines when they’ve got actual professionals at the superhuman bullshit with them.

When they step into the room with Aldrich Killian, a high-ceilinged concrete hall with barely any windows or exits but a dozen hostiles inside, Hawkeye immediately runs for higher ground while Nat strikes quick as a snake and shoots Killian in the shoulder.

Several of the guys with Killian yell, and another pulls a gun-

-and then Cap’s shield hits it right out of his hands, and the guy screams briefly before his hands just glow orange as the broken fingers reknit themselves.

“The Avengers,” Killian spits, as Extremis remakes his shoulder back into smooth unmarred flesh. “Come to avenge _ Tony Stark-” _

“Yeah, yeah, just shut it,” Hawkeye calls, now up in his nest, and takes a shot at Killian too.

Then Killian’s people pull their shit together and the argument escalates into a brawl with fires erupting left to right. Rhodey and Maya take cover behind a pillar while Natasha fights three people at once, landing blows and shots just to see the damage heal in seconds, while Cap throws his shield to knock people down for Hawkeye to then finish with his arrows. But Barton’s not fast enough, with one, and the woman lunges up from the floor with a roar and gets her burning hands on Cap before Maya jumps out and shoots her in the head.

Rhodey peeks out from behind his pillar to shoot another guy, and then he just has to stop and openly stare at how Cap just breaks someone’s _ neck _ with his bare _ hands _ even as blisters form on his palms, and then Maya ducks in next to Rhodey again, breathing fast.

The fight’s starting to end in that disorderly way brawls do-

Someone’s whimpering in a corner, there’s a couple of bodies strewn on the floor, and Hawkeye tries to act like the arm he’s cradling to his chest _ isn’t _ injured. There’s still three, two people fighting along with Killian though, when Rhodey and Maya step out again, Natasha keeping one of them busy while Cap’s lost his shield, but when Rogers gets his shield back he just yells, _ “Surrender!” _

-and the guy fighting Natasha just folds up and sits down on the floor, hands up.

Natasha looks down at him, cocks her head, and then nonchalantly wipes off the blood from her knives with her sleeve.

“Okay-” Cap says, and is immediately interrupted by Killian, who’s lying on the floor and regrowing something inside his abdomen judging by the glow and his grimace.

“Hansen!” he spits, grinning. “I didn’t see you at first, oh Hansen. Couldn’t save Tony, could you? COULD YOU? You _ worthless-” _

Natasha flicks her hand and then there’s a knife sticking out of Killian’s hip, and he moans and twitches.

“Killian,” Maya says, stepping forward. She looks down at him. “It’d be a waste of energy to kill you. Did you know it’s possible to remove the Extremis virus from a person?”

Killian grimaces and hisses something that Rhodey doesn’t catch. Maya’s expression doesn’t even waver.

“Romanov,” she says. “Would you please bring the power-dampening cuffs?”

And so Aldrich Killian and his associates are captured and brought in by the Avengers.

* * *

It’s eerily quiet inside of the plane, apart from the sucking rush of the wind through broken windows and other openings, but there’s 14 alive heat signatures aboard, with one being significantly hotter than the other thirteen.

_ EXTREMIS-ENHANCED HOSTILE, _ comes JARVIS’s hypothesis.

Extremis v.1.5 is, however, worlds apart from Extremis v.1.616.

_ Yes, _ Tony agrees.

But, _ fourteen _ heat signatures. Civilian lives.

Tony orders,_ JARVIS, activate house party protocol, _just in case - sometimes it pays to be paranoid - and then Tony starts to follow the abnormal heat signature through the plane. The armour can be quiet when he wants it to, and Tony sneaks up behind the hostile - that Savin guy from earlier - and slams him into a wall, seeing with different kinds of sensors how his bones break, but Extremis crawls up along his back as he grins manically at Iron Man, and undoes all damage. “Tony Stark!” he drawls. “I thought the boss said he’d put a bullet through you.”

“Two, actually” says Iron Man’s flat electronic voice as he crushes Savin’s arm, watching it heal in mere seconds with 15 different sensors reporting the same fucking thing. “Better luck-”

_ WARNING: HE IS MELTING THE LEFT GAUNTLET AND ABDOMINAL PIECES _

“-next time,” and Tony grits his teeth in his real live flesh body here, straining to get the suit out of Savin’s grasp and feeling the heat against the armour almost like it’s happening to _ him- _

Savin laughs breathily, obviously struggling to hold the suit in place, and says, “Why thank you. Oh, and that reminds me-” he opens his left fist to show off a tiny remote for just a second before pressing the button- “Go fish!”

Tony hears the explosion at the same time as JARVIS says, _ THE PLANE IS IN FREE FALL _

One, two, seven, _ thirteen _ heat signatures being flushed out of the plane, ripped into free fall thousands of feet above the goddamn ground, and Tony starts to charge up the beam function of the arc reactor set into Iron Man’s chest, his most brutal last-resort weapon. It’s lethal, and when it goes off it carves a smoking hole straight through Savin’s chest.

“Let’s see you recover from _ this, _ you son of a bitch,” Tony growls, and Savin’s body slackens as he sags to the floor.

_ THE SUITS ARE HERE. _

Just in time, and Tony flings Iron Man out of the smoking plane just in time to watch all his forty other suits come swooping in to catch the falling plane staff, his mind flitting from suit to suit with Extremis to reassure them all individually that it’s all okay, Iron Man’s got them, they’re safe.

Well, Iron _ Men _ has got them, technically, but whatever.

“Oh my god,” says one of the stewardesses. “I’m in _ the Iron Man suit.” _

“Hell yeah,” Tony tells her through her helmet. “You’re all Iron Man now. Say, where do you think I should drop you guys off?”

_ “Holy shit,” _ the stewardess whispers. “Um. I mean, we were supposed to go to DC…”

“Done,” Tony says, sending all the suits the command to head for DC after the Iron Patriot suit. “Have a safe flight, miss, and thank you for choosing Iron Man Airlines.”

The flight attendant giggles before Tony cuts the communications to her, and then he just lets his own empty suit hover in the air for a second, watching all the Iron Man suits zooming off into the distance, the armour plates gleaming in the sunlight.

Spectacular. He should do something with them and fireworks.

“Not bad,” comes JARVIS’s voice, through the helmet this time. He sounds faintly amused and completely approving, for once. “I believe you’ve just saved the day, Sir.”

_ Not yet, _ Tony tells him. _ Is that plane going to crash into anything once it hits the ground? _

“Based on its current trajectory, the plane will fall into the Atlantic ocean and at most hit an unlucky seagull.”

Oh, that is so good. That is absolutely wonderful.

_ To New York, _ he tells the suit - and then he pulls back, back, opening his human eyes again to a muddy blurry sky and blinking. He rubs at his eyes and squints and then looks at up at Steve, from where he’s sitting and leaning against him on a park bench in sunny Miami, and Steve meets his eye.

“You done?” he asks, voice sure and calm.

Tony smiles, and withdraws quickly before he gets any risky ideas, like shoving his tongue down his throat and suggesting that Steve just stay in this time, consequences be _ damned. _“Yup.”

He can deal with this.

* * *

When Tony called Pepper again, she made him explain what the hell he was doing before agreeing to anything else. But if Tony’s hunting down the Mandarin and his associates, then _ yes, _ Pepper will gladly help.

He sends her files, emails, web histories, documents, account information, plans. Pepper gets on a jet to the states, then starts sifting through the data to compile evidence against Aldrich Killian, his accomplices, the actual vice-president, and many other minor cases. As she does that she also calls Maria Hill, who Pepper had started speaking with more after Phil’s “death”, and takes out her lunch box of olives from her briefcase.

“Maria Hill,” says Maria then, picking up the phone.

“Hi, it’s Pepper. I need your help.”

“Are you in danger?” Maria asks immediately.

Hah, she’s already been. “There’s someone you should look into arresting,” Pepper tells her. “Several people, even. Give me an address and I can forward the evidence; my end is secure.” Stark Tech is always secure - and if not, at least Pepper can be sure her private communications can’t possibly be spied on.

Tony and JARVIS have made sure of that.

“You- alright.” Maria is quiet for a moment, then gives Pepper an email address.

Pepper forwards the evidence, then eats an olive.

Maria’s end of the line is just breathing for a long moment, until she says, “Wow. This - wow, shit.”

“So?” Pepper prompts her politely.

“SHIELD will - definitely look into this. Right now. I’ll be in touch, Potts. Hill out.” And Maria hangs up.

Pepper leans back in her seat and glances out at the sky through the plane window. It’s a soft wintery blue with streaks and banks of white clouds, like something out of a photograph. Pepper’s part of Tony’s plan is done, now. She’s dealt the last finishing blow to Aldrich Killian’s AIM and its affairs. She’s traveling back home, and in a matter of days it’ll be Christmas.

She smiles smugly to herself, breathes in deep, eats another olive, then opens up her business email account.


	6. Chapter 6

Downton Abbey is playing on low volume when Tony carefully sneaks into the hospital room, holding a vaguely Christmassy plant in a pot against his chest. The nurse told him that Happy woke up, finally, but that he might be resting again now, so Tony tries not to make even a single sound.

The susurrus of hospital machinery is already terrifyingly loud in his mind, anyway.

But when he looks at Happy, Happy blearily looks back at him.

He looks - really beat up, car-crash beat up. What’s visible of his face beneath the bandages is bruised as hell. But he’s healing. He’s awake, and he’ll recover fully, and Tony smiles at him and turns to put the plant up on the table next to his bed to buy himself just a little time to arrange his emotions back into some working order.

“Hi Hap,” he says when he’s done, and forcibly stops himself from fidgeting. “I guess… Well, merry Christmas, buddy. I’m glad you’re awake. And I’m sorry for… a lot. But, I also have to say, thanks for-”

For the first bit of evidence that led JARVIS and Tony to Tennessee. For trying to look out for Tony and Pepper. For - everything since Switzerland 1999 and many, many things from before that, even. Tony behaved so, so stupidly for so long, but Happy had his back anyway, which is pretty fucking amazing of him, if Tony may say so. 

“Thanks for your help,” Tony finishes, a little too quietly, and then he doesn’t say anything more and lets Happy watch his Downton Abbey in peace. 

* * *

The weather’s been really cold this week so there’s a lot of snow and ice now, and Harley’s shoes are all wet when he gets home. It’s finally Christmas break though, so he’ll have time to hang out with his sister, and to do a bunch of stuff he’s been planning to for _ ages, _ like building that thing he’s been planning out in the garage on the weekends-

But when Harley opens the door to the garage, _ everything _ is _ different. _

There’s new _ lights _ and new _ tools _ and it’s all so shiny and cool, and there’s a bigger sofa - and the mechanic, Tony Stark, is sitting on the sofa. “Hi, kid,” he says. He’s wearing real winter clothes this time. “I could say something grateful or deep here, but I won’t, so I’m just gonna say - merry Christmas Harley.”

“Wow,” Harley breathes. There’s a - what's it called - a _ hologram _ projector showing blueprints on a table. There’s a better set of screwdrivers. And _ Tony came back. _

When he hugs Tony, the guy’s really still at first and Harley almost gets worried he’s done something wrong, that Tony’s freaking out again, but then Tony puts an arm around him and everything’s okay. “Thanks,” Harley says muffled into Tony’s jacket, and Tony ruffles his hair a little.

“Sure,” Tony then says, and his voice sounds a bit weird. Harley worriedly glances up, but Tony’s not having PTSD trouble - he’s just blinking a lot.

“You okay?” Harley asks.

“What? Yeah,” Tony says. He clears his throat and smiles. “Yes. Now, you want to play a little with your new toys or-”

“Yes! Yes, yes, you have to show me what this is-”

And Tony really _ does _seem really okay, when they’re looking at all the cool new tools Tony bought Harley, so Harley forgets about that one little moment and then they spend two hours in the garage together, just like that.

* * *

The day after everything went down, Steve’s in Malibu, helping the workers dig up Tony’s stuff from the rubble.

There’s almost nothing left of what was a magnificent marble-white mansion the day Steve first came up here. Bits of the house fell into the ocean, and several other rooms just collapsed in on themselves without the support of the rest of the house. 

The garage is still mostly intact though, and Steve’s glad. What Tony cares the most about is always in the garage; his tools, his work, his robots.

Steve remembers Tony smiling at him, telling him to look for Dum-E and U, and-

_ I won’t have this forever, _ Steve reminds himself, sternly. _ I won’t have this forever. _

He knows. _ Tony _ knows. Steve can’t stay in this time because, because…

They already have a Steve Rogers, and Steve - him, now - _ knows too much. _People would die and kill for the kind of insider information Steve has about the future.

So, Steve has to leave.

After he’s helped Tony get all his things from Malibu to New York. What harm can it do to help him out one last time?

* * *

Harley’s little sister gave Tony an idea.

Well, to be honest Harley’s sister just told Tony to stop being dumb and just invite the guy he likes over for Christmas, because who doesn’t love presents, and then because of those words Tony had a brilliant shining vision; the seed for a _ plan _ to grow from.

He’s going to bring Steve over to New York for Xmas, and not only that, Tony’s going to Malibu with a jet to pick him up personally. 

It’s very sweet of Steve to help in the effort to dig up the ruins of Tony’s Malibu house, but then again Tony had also seen him help with reconstruction and cleaning after the battle of New York, which Tony doesn’t think about, right. Point is, Steve likes helping people. Steve’s a genuine fucking superhero that way.

He’s _ good. _ He’s also from the future and could know all kinds of _ things _ about Tony, but then again, when has Tony ever let anything like a little danger or embarrassment _ stop _ him? Never. And he’s not about to start now, either. And you miss a lot of the good things you _ don’t _ try to grab, so there’s that, too.

He’s going to grab this chance. If Steve gives him anything, just a little, Tony’s going to take it and hold on with both hands.

-Tony takes one of the cars he stores at the airport and drives by himself up the road to the cliff where he decided to build his house - and it _ had _ been a fantastic piece of architecture; fuck the people who said it was impossible to actually _ build _ it, because the house sure stood there for a lot of years, _ hah _ \- and he enjoys his last drive along the driveway. The breeze of the sea, the cliffs below, the limitless horizon.

There’s a reason he built the house here other than just pure spite.

When Tony parks the car Steve comes jogging up to meet him, and Tony takes one look at his face and promptly says, “I can’t _ believe _you shaved.”

That scoundrel. He shrugs, and runs a hand over his now smooth jaw. “I grew a beard mostly for the disguise, you know.”

“Hmrph,” Tony says, and just takes him in. He’s… well, he still doesn't look entirely like Capsicle Jr. His hair’s longer, styled differently, and he still hasn’t quite lost that more rugged impression. He holds himself differently, too - his posture is loose and relaxed, and by all accounts he looks…

Tony bites his lip.

“Fine,” Tony says, quickly. “Hop in the car. I’m taking you back to New York.”

“Are you now?” Steve says, but walks obediently around the car to get in the passenger’s seat.

“Yep,” Tony says, and starts the car. “It’s_ Christmas, _ you can’t possibly spend it digging around in the sand looking for my old knick-knacks.”

“Could too,” Steve quips back.

Tony shakes his head and pulls out on the road, opening his mind to Extremis for just a moment to send a note to Pepper. But when Tony next glances at Steve, Steve’s frowning.

“What?” Tony asks.

“You - shouldn’t you be watching the road?”

“I am watching the road,” Tony says, and does just that even though it means he can’t watch Steve. “Are you insulting my driving skills, popsicle?”

“Your eyes…” Steve says, and trails off.

“My eyes?” Tony prompts him, keeping aforementioned body parts fixed firmly on the road.

“Your eyes change colour when you use Extremis,” Steve says. “To this weird - bluish black colour. It’s odd.”

_ And _ damning. Has that been happening all the time he’s used Extremis? Fucking snitch feature. 

“O-kay,” Tony says slowly. _ “That’s _ an interesting side effect.”

“Didn’t you know about it before?” Steve asks, and Tony can feel him looking at him, wondering how the hell Steve can read him so well- but of course. The ten extra years of baggage Steve’s got.

Dangerous baggage.

“No,” Tony admits. “But it’s not like it harms anyone. And I’d totally look good with blue eyes.”

Steve’s silent for a moment. “Tony,” he then says, quietly. “How much did you - actually know about Extremis when you had Maya shoot you up with it?”

He wrote the damn code himself, alongside Maya, the world’s leading and only expert. He knows it like he knows anything else he’s built; the suit, the chips in his arms, the code for the bots. He wouldn’t have put it in his goddamn _ body _ if he hadn’t written code for it himself. And besides, was there any other choice? He was bleeding to death on the lab floor, and Maya giving him a little of the virus was probably the only thing that saved him.

How can’t Steve know that some things are just _ necessary? _

“I knew enough,” Tony says curtly. “And I’m alive and well, as you can see.”

“Tony-” Steve begins.

“Dammit!” Tony exclaims, throwing one hand up. “Why don’t you _ get it? _ Sometimes you only have a bad choice and an even worse choice, and you’ll just have to pick one. Extremis saved my life. Extremis could save the _ Earth, _ if I just manage to enhance my-”

“Alright,” Steve says, shockingly, and all Tony’s energy leaves him.

Tony stares at Steve, who looks back at him.

“It saved your life,” Steve echoes. “I’m - you know. I’m stubborn, and sometimes I don’t listen to you, but… do you _ want _ to have Extremis? It’s not hurting you in any way?”

Tony swallows and tears his eyes from Steve to look back at the road before he drives into a ditch. “Yes. I want - I _ need _it. And it’s not hurting me, Jesus, do you think I’m some kind of masochist?” he jokes.

“With you it’s hard to know,” Steve grumbles, and lets out a long sigh. When Tony sneaks a glance at him, Steve’s closed his eyes. He says, “If you’re happy…” 

Tony looks at the small frown lines on his face and the way his fringe falls over it, and thinks, _ you’re leaving. You’re leaving you’re leaving please don’t leave me. _

He doesn’t want this version of Steve to leave. The one who actually cares about him, the one who Tony could love.

“Yeah,” Tony says, ripping the words out from somewhere deep in his throat. “Yeah, I’m happy with Extremis. Case closed. We’ll be at the airport in a minute.”

He can try to suggest that he stays. He’ll insist and plead and flirt and offer all kinds of things, if he doesn’t watch himself, but having Steve over for Christmas - he can have that much.

* * *

When they arrive in New York it’s already night. On the drive up to Avengers Tower neither of them say a word, but the one time Steve manages to tear his eyes away from the windows to look at Tony, he’s got this oddly soft look on his face as he looks at Steve, and he ducks to hide his expression when Steve glances at him.

Something warm twists just a little in Steve’s heart, at that. 

They’ve come such a long way in such a short time - but is it any wonder? This is where Steve’s always wished to get with Tony, being on the same side, having each other’s back, gladly sitting next to each other. 

_ United we stand and divided we fall. _

Steve just wishes he could’ve had this with_ his _ Tony, instead of a few short stolen moments in between distrusting each other and Steve saying the wrong thing and hurting Tony. But it’s over, it’s done. He’s lived that life and all its sorrows and scars, and now-

Now-

He has to leave another Tony behind.

He_ has _to, because otherwise he won’t ever be able to make himself leave and he’ll erase Morgan from existence, he’ll - he’ll ruin things. He might already be ruining things. The Ancient One hasn’t shown up to kick his ass yet for crimes against the timestream but, still, it can’t continue like this.

They already have a Steve Rogers here, an active Captain America.

It’s just not… oh, _ who is Steve kidding? _

He _ wants _ to stay here more than he’s wanted anything in a long time. His justifications all sound weak because his _ resolve _ is weak. He’s been told by many people at great length what a stubborn son of a bitch he is, how adamantly he refuses to budge or see reason, he’s fought more battles than he can remember by sheer will and grit alone, and now - he just can’t bring himself to put all that into use.

He’s over a hundred years old, and he’s _ done, _ he just wants to smooth a hand over the back of Tony’s neck and feel the knobs of his spine under his hands, the brush of curls at the back of his head, and fit his mouth against his jaw. His lips. His cheeks.

He’s seen Tony die on a battlefield but now he’s got Tony here, despite that, just_ inches _ between them, and when he catches Tony looking at him with that _ look _ in his eyes-

So Steve’s a goddamned bastard, is he. Well, he’s fine with that, actually, if he can just get to _ keep this. _

Steve’s voice is raspy as he says, “I’m done with my mission. My last mission. I came here just because…”

Two-thousand and twelve. Tony who turns and looks at him as they’re stopped at a red light, cautious. He’s thinking about something, Steve can tell, because he’s drumming with his fingers on the wheel. He might be nervous. His eyes are entirely warm brown and human when he glances up.

“I missed you,” Steve finishes, badly, revealing all too much. He should perhaps care more about that. “I wish I could stay here.”

Tony’s staring at him like he’s - he’s something greater than he is, yet not. “So what the hell’s stopping you?” he asks.

The worst thing is that Steve’s forgotten all of the reasons apart from the one he can’t ever tell Tony, and the one that’s painfully obvious. “You already have a Steve Rogers,” he says to Tony.

“So fucking what?” Tony says. He says then, mockingly, “‘Oh, poor us! We have _ two _ Captains America! Whatever shall we do’-”

“I shouldn’t stay,” Steve tries again, more firmly.

“Maybe,” Tony tells him, his eyes dark and strange in the light of the street passing by, before he focuses on the road again. “You should think about what you _ want, _ instead. Since you’ve got no plans either way, honeypuff.”

Steve turns his face away, the sound of nothing deafening every thought in his head, and looks out at the city.

* * *

Tony invited the Avengers over, too, obviously, because otherwise where’s the fun? What’s the surprising bit is that so many of them actually _ came, _ like wow.

When Tony and Steve enter the common room, Clint and Nat, wearing matching delightfully awful Christmas sweaters, are sprawled on a sofa together, watching TV, while Bruce is asleep in an armchair and Younger Steve stands by the panorama windows and looks down at the city. Nearly the whole band’s here, which makes this the perfect time to introduce them all to the concept of _ alternate versions of themselves, _ ahaha.

“Hey,” Tony says, as they step inside, and Natasha and Clint and Steve look up and over. And then their expressions get _ really _ fascinating. “May I introduce you all,” Tony says with only a little bit of glee, “to Steve Rogers, of 2023.”

Clint blinks. Natasha narrows her eyes. Other Steve staggers half a step forward, and then takes a step back.

“Hmm?” Bruce mumbles, and put on his glasses so he can squint at Steve, too. “Oh,” he then says.

“Hi everyone,” Steve says dutifully, and glares a little at Tony. “I am… well. Steve Rogers from the future, _ thank _ you Tony.”

“Wait, stop,” Clint says, and points at Steve. “You - are from the future? Really? Is that- is he for real, Stark?”

“Yup,” Tony says, taking great pleasure both in popping the p and seeing the looks on his teammates’ faces.

_ “This _ was your plan?” Steve steps closer to murmur, sounding affronted.

“Excuse you, my plans are brilliant,” Tony says. “And now that the family’s met you, you’re all cleared to stay in the house!”

Steve pinches the bridge of his nose and mumbles something, while Tony ambles over to the bar to mix the lot of them some eggnog.

* * *

The funny thing is that if you get enough eggnog and vodka into these Avengers, the merry younger versions of Steve’s old broken friends, then what happens is that they all cluster around in the living room and start telling stories. Steve and Younger Him, who both can’t get drunk, retreat to their own little corner of the room and talk for awhile, and it’s… _ massively _weird.

Younger him is both so very much _ himself _ \- but also he’s not, he’s a separate entity. He’s freakishly similar, but just the fact that they can hold a conversation in the first place… they’re not completely identical.

“Have I told you how weird it is, that you just showed up here, and now you’re hanging out with yourself?” Clint calls out from the sofas, with no preamble. “It’s more than just weird, it’s - it’s really kinda suspicious.”

“I figure he could use some advice.”

“‘He’”, Clint echoes. He’s got his feet up on the coffee table with Natasha’s legs draped across his lap, a glass of eggnog held precariously in his increasingly laxening grip. “Really. _ Really, _ Stevie isn’t the only one who’d like some hints, you know, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I’m only really qualified to mess with my own life, Clint,” Steve says, because he knows what Clint’s getting at here, and he’s setting a swift stop to it now, at once.

“Well. You’re boring,” Clint says, with no heat, and fumbles so badly with his glass in his attempt to take a sip that some of it slops out on the sofa. “Aw no, sofa,” he mumbles, and tries to wipe it up with his sleeve.

“Christ,” Natasha mumbles, eyes closed. “Get a fucking towel, Clint.”

_ “You _ get a towel,” Clint grumbles back.

Steve feels both very content and very sadly nostalgic, looking at them. Bruce is meanwhile sitting safely in his own armchair, observing them amusedly while drinking his non-alcoholic herbal tea, but Tony’s about to fall off his own chair if he leans any more to the side. “The cleaning service can take care of it,” he says. 

“Maybe it’s time to go to bed,” Steve suggests.

“No!” Clint and Tony both say, and Bruce hides a chuckle by coughing.

“I’m just staying here for the - the _ this,” _ Clint says, slurring only a little. “Have to leave for- I’m leaving tomorrow. Let me have this.”

Steve guesses that Clint needs to get back to his farm, Laura and the kids, for Christmas. He knows how much Clint’s family means to him, has seen it tragically up close.

“And you, Nat?” Steve asks.

“I’m staying for Stark’s party,” she says. “Fury’s going to make him put half of SHIELD on the guest list. No better place to mingle.”

“Oh, is that how it is,” Tony says, and straightens up his chair to frown at Natasha. “You’re only here for the job, are you?”

“And for the eggnog. And Pepper.” Natasha opens her eyes then. “Shouldn't Ms. Potts be here soon?”

“Tomorrow,” Tony says, waving away Nat’s concern. “She is. Very busy.”

Of course Ms. Potts is. She’s the CEO of Tony’s massive international company, a job even Tony had issues managing. She’s been just as remarkable as any of the capes since long before she put on the Rescue suit, handling all of SI and supporting Tony in his every endeavour. There was probably _ no one _ who meant as much to Tony in all the world, except for Morgan, in the end.

They’re meant to be.

And Steve needs to _ leave _this century and head - elsewhere. Anywhere else than here.

Younger Him’s frowning at him, in that underhanded overly neutral way, like he’s trying to figure him out, and Steve quickly says, “Alright everyone, bedtime. And drink some water to help with the hangover.”

* * *

In the morning, Steve makes French toast.

Cap Jr. looks strangely like a kid that’s just been caught doing something he shouldn’t, but he’d been looking that way all evening too. He keeps either avoiding to look at Steve entirely, or staring at him for long periods and sizing him up. Tony would laugh at him at that, but fair enough - it_ is _ kinda uncanny valley to have two copies of the exact same person hanging around.

Natasha doesn’t look the least bit hangover as she pads into the kitchen and nabs a piece of toast directly out of the pan, and Steve lets her, quickly holding out a plate for her to deposit the food on.

Bruce just drinks his tea and eats his own Indian breakfast bread in peace.

Clint left a few minutes ago, saying he’ll send them a card in the mail. The_ paper _mail, good god.

And Thor’s off in Asgård, doing whatever it is he normally does.

Tony keeps slowly drinking his coffee, feeling the seconds ticking down with Extremis, and waiting for that special beep from the front door as those two special people he’s been waiting for all morning to get here finally arrive. 

So when he feels that chime in the back of his mind, at last, he drains his mug in one go and gets up from the table, ignoring how his headache comes back to pound in his skull like it wants to be let out of his head and unleashed upon the world.

“Tony?” Steve asks from the stove.

“Shush, we’ve got guests,” Tony says, and skips away to the elevator.

When the elevator doors slide open, JARVIS is talking happily with Pepper who’s in a stunning designer peacoat, while Rhodey in a North Face down jacket is balancing a few wrapped presents stacked in his arms. “Tony,” he greets him. “Come help me carry these.”

“Rude,” Tony says, but takes a few of the packages anyway, following Rhodey up to the guest room corridor of the penthouse. Tony hired an interior decorator to come in and place candles and holly in all the guest rooms in aesthetically pleasing ways, but in the room designated as Rhodey’s Tony himself has added some terrible knock-off Iron Man holiday merchandise.

“Wow,” Rhodey says flatly, and puts the presents down on the bed.

“Isn’t it fantastic how creative people are?” Tony agrees, setting down the rest of the boxes. “My favourite is the one with the reindeer, and the Hulk as santa.”

“Which- oh.” Rhodey closes his eyes for a moment, and Tony cackles. “Didn’t you say you had other guests, too?” Rhodey then asks, determinedly ignoring the entire left wall. “Let’s go find them.”

“After you, candy cane,” Tony says easily, and lets Rhodey lead the way back to the kitchen.

* * *

Pepper takes off her coat, puts her gloves in an inner pocket, and then drapes the coat over the back of a sofa in the living room. Then she decides to take a look in the kitchen instead of waiting for the boys to return, and finds Bruce Banner, the Black Widow, and two Captains Rogers loitering around in there.

Rogers the older is making French toast, but Rogers the younger quickly gets up from the table and offers Pepper his hand when she steps inside. She shakes it, because he’s amusingly adorable, and he says, “Thank you so much for helping with all the press and interview requests, Ms. Potts.”

“You’re welcome,” she tells him, smiling, and he ducks his head.

He is relentlessly, haplessly charming.

Rogers the older, on the other hand, is doing his best to ignore her. Pepper firmly resolves to not try to read anything in that, and greets Natasha and Bruce instead, who both look happy to see her. And while Pepper doesn’t like how the Avengers are affecting Tony - well, Pepper’s not going to be rude to them just because of that, just yet.

It’s but a moment later that Tony and Rhodey enter the kitchen, and Pepper quickly draws Tony away for a more private conversation in the living room, ignoring the others’ looks. Tony agrees easily and they pick out a sofa at the back of the room, where Pepper makes Tony sit down before saying, “You look good. Healthier.”

“Thanks,” Tony says. “You look resplendent as always, Pep.”

“Of course,” Pepper says, and folds her hands in her lap so that she can’t fiddle with anything. She breathes in deep and says, “Tony… I don’t think we should get back together. This is, you’ve been so…” she struggles to find some good words to use, the gentlest possible way to tell Tony that their romantic relationship is well and truly dead, but then Tony interrupts her softly,

“I know,” he says. Pepper stares at him, and he says, “I mean. It’s just not… we had a good run, right, but-”

“Yeah,” Pepper agrees, quickly. She wondered, earlier, whether she would feel sad. And she _ does _ feel a little sad, she supposes - but the truth is that they already broke up, agreed to take a break, long ago.

It’s been over for some time now.

Which is why Pepper needed to make_ that _ clear, before saying, “And I thought you should know that I’m pregnant, by the way.”

Tony stares at her comically. He opens his mouth, shuts it, and then blurts out, _ “What? _ When? You’re-”

“Some months ago,” Pepper says calmly, smiling at him reassuringly so that he won’t get any crazy ideas. “I decided to keep the baby. I’m not asking you to - _ do _ anything, but I really thought you should know first.”

“Because I’m the father,” Tony says, sounding a bit like he’s getting strangled.

“Yes,” Pepper says. She moves a hand to pat him on the knee. “But as I said, you don’t have to-”

“Of _ course _ I have to,” Tony says, and runs both hands through his hair, looking manic again. “How do I- when will the baby be born? Do you have a name ready? Do you-”

“It’s fine,” Pepper tells him, soothingly. “The baby will be born in the summer, and I’ve been thinking about the name ‘Morgan’. I think it’s pretty good, very unisex too. And I’m handling all the SI affairs already, so I’ve got that under control.”

“I need to rewrite my will,” Tony says absently, still looking shell-shocked, and puts his head in his hands.

* * *

Pepper tells the rest of Tony’s gathered friends the absolutely insane news, and meanwhile Tony stands behind her in the doorway feeling like time is suddenly whizzing past him too fast for even Extremis to track.

He’s going to be a _ father. _

He’s been hit by a _ landslide _ of visions of the future spiralling out of control, and it’s like something’s wrong with his hearing. He keeps hearing his heart pounding and his blood rushing like Extremis has turned up the volume, is trying to show him alerts for elevated heart rate, elevated breathing, _ calm down. _

The lights in the room are starting to flicker-

“I’m gonna,” Tony says, when Pepper glances at him, and waves at the balcony, “Get some air. Just a sec.”

He dives outside without waiting for anyone to notice his absence and goes up close to the railing, gripping it with both hands and feeling the cold of the steel bite his hands. It’s midday and the sky is annoyingly, cheerfully baby blue.

_ Baby _ blue. Oh god.

Tony rests his head against the railing with only a little mild hysteria, feeling the snow melt disgustingly against his forehead, and then there’s a sudden _ hand _ on his neck and Tony jerks and whirls around, coming face-to-face with - Steve. Familiar, older Steve.

“Hey,” he says, softly. “You okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?” Tony’s voice sounds strange to his own ears. “Everything’s fine.”

“Congratulations on the baby,” Steve says.

Tony groans, and scrubs a hand over his face, wiping off the snow. “Tell that to Pepper. I’m - pretty useless, on the whole.”

“You’ll be a great dad,” Steve just says, relentlessly kind and stubborn and convinced he’s right. “Morgan will adore you.”

“How the hell do you know that?” Tony snaps.

Steve just looks at him steadily, and Tony realises. Oh.

He _ does _ somehow know it, with some kind of factual evidence, and maybe Steve knew this announcement was coming the whole morning. Maybe he was just waiting for it to happen, waiting for Pepper to arrive, for Tony to step out on the balcony so Steve could tell him-

Or maybe _ not everything is about Tony, _ and everything’s always only been a whim, just random chance.

Maybe there’s a timeline where Iron Man dies flying the nuke into space, and in that timeline he’ll never have this.

Tony Stark has constructed many different ways of hiding his emotions: a cutting, snarky reply. A deflection and a press smile. A claim of being busy elsewhere. Flirting relentlessly and leaning in so close his conversation partner has to either step back, or swallow the bait. Simply turning his face away, curling into the nearest available surface until his interrogator leaves him alone.

Right now he knows Steve would see through every single one, and he kind of _ wants _ him to.

The gentlest form of surrender. Giving up a few pieces of himself for Steve to see, just because he believes that Steve wouldn’t turn him away.

The cold wind whistles in his ears and below the city’s humming.

“Why did you come here?” Tony whispers.

Steve swallows and Tony looks into his eyes, so pale blue in the sunlight that they’re almost silver. “To see everyone again,” Steve murmurs. “To see _ you.” _

He can’t be leaving, he can’t _ possibly _ be leaving after this, _ he can’t- _

Once upon a time, Tony was suave. Now he just says, “Please don’t leave me.”

They’re trapped on this precipice in time, on a sliver of a balcony hundreds of feet above the streets, and Tony’s shivering from the cold, frozen in place just a few inches away from Steve’s solid warmth. Steve has a beautiful core temperature, as Tony knows. Their poses on this balcony could be a metaphor for whatever the fuck it is that’s _ really _ happening here.

“I…” Steve begins, looking lost. “You already have a Steve.”

“I told you, we don’t care,” Tony says, and this is it, the final battle of a long emotional war. “Please.”

Steve closes his eyes and breathes out and Tony counts every agonising second until he opens his mouth again and says, “Okay.”

-and then Tony’s stepped into his arms and put an arm around his waist, feeling the unbearable tension crest and finally break as he buries his face in the crook of Steve’s shoulder and feels Steve breathe beneath his hands.

* * *

The party room of the Avengers Tower is, thanks to the efforts of many, many people who Tony and Pepper had hired, sparkling. Christmas lights are draped strategically from the rafters and balcony railings, the room is clean and all the mats and pillows and smaller furniture have been replaced by newer specimens in red and gold and rich cream, and the bars have all been stocked with fresh hors d’oeuvres and Christmassy cocktails.

It took the experts about three hours to achieve this. 

Steve’s standing in the doorway in some nicer clothes he’d borrowed from his younger self, while Tony and Pepper oversee the last of the preparations, the both of them dressed in wine red. Tony is in a tux with gold details, while Pepper is in a long, trailing winter gown. “Right,” Tony says as he comes up to Steve, eyes fading from black to brown. Steve no longer minds that. “That’s it, this room is officially decorated, now the first of the guests should start arriving_ any _ minute…”

“Oho,” says Nat from behind Steve, and Steve steps aside to let her pass. She’s put up her hair in as big a bun as the length of her hair allows, and changed into a navy long-sleeved dress with a slit up her leg. “Your minions have been busy.”

“Do you like it?” Tony asks. “I’ll have you know this cost thousands of dollar to get in order, and that’s just the decorations.”

“It’s very festive,” Nat says, and then smiles at Pepper, who smiles back at her a tad hostively. “Hi Pepper, you look ravishing.”

“Thank you,” Pepper says graciously. “You don’t look so bad yourself.”

Natasha winks at her.

“Jesus,” Tony says, and then looks at Steve, who shrugs at him while stifling a grin. God, he’s missed _ Natasha _ so much, too. It’s like he’s constantly being surprised by the increasing strength of his happiness, standing here again among his old friends who he has mourned and missed so dearly.

Soon Steve’s younger self and Bruce also show up, both looking uncomfortable in fancy clothes, and after them is Rhodes in a neat blue suit and tie. And after them, the actual guest-list guests start popping in, with Nick Fury, Maria Hill and Phil Coulson being the first ones to show up.

Nick squints for a long moment at Steve and younger him, standing next to each other, before saying, “You were right, Romanov. It really _ is _ disorienting as hell when they do that.”

Natasha just quirks her eyebrows, and then sweeps off with Hill to gossip.

Phil doesn’t move a single facial muscle, of course, but Steve still smugly thinks that he’s looking a bit thrown.

It feels like a _ relief _ to see everyone again, alive and happy. Like finally being able to rest. Steve wishes Thor would be here too - but sometimes you can’t have everything. Except for how maybe, now Steve _ can. _ Since he’s staying here now - a concept which both thrills, terrifies and excites him - then he can maybe stop the whole Hydra situation before the helicarriers even go up. He can tell Tony about Bucky’s involvement in the death of his parents _ before _ anyone tries to break them with the fact of it. He can maybe even prevent the creation of Ultron-

-but then there’s the question, would preventing Ultron make it so that Vision is never born?

Which in turn would save JARVIS from dying?

This, _ this _ is why he first so adamantly refused to entertain the notion of staying, but now he’s gone and told Tony he _ won’t leave him _ \- and Steve won’t. He doesn’t want to, he _ wants _ this bright crazy future with Tony, for as long as he can have it. And the consequences - damn them. Ever since he came here, small things have been going differently than in his native timeline - Maya Hansen is alive for one, standing over at one of the bars in a grey dress, talking to Helen Cho.

That’s a _ good thing. _

Sometimes good things come out of breaking other things.

“Hey, Steven,” says a voice then, and Steve turns around and sees Natasha. She quirks an eyebrow and says, “Want to dance?”

Christmas music is playing on low volume from a speaker system somewhere, warm and inviting, and Steve never got to say goodbye to Natasha either.

He swallows the sudden lump in his throat and says, “Sure,” and Natasha comes and puts a hand on his shoulder, so Steve takes her other hand in his and carefully puts another above her waist. “Fair warning,” Steve tells her. “I haven’t practiced dancing in... many, many years.”

“That’s fine,” Nat says, amused. “Just move with the melody and sway a little.”

They’re not the only ones dancing, either - Maria and Nick are doing some kind of weird dance off to the side, while Rhodey dances with a journalist in a shimmery white dress. 

They sway a little, arguably to the tune of the song.

“You look good,” Steve says. Because Natasha looks… happy.

“You don’t look too bad either,” Nat says. “Future treat you well?”

“Well,” Steve says, uncomfortably. “Could’ve been a lot better.”

Years on the run, followed by years living an empty life with the horrible knowledge that they lost and that the universe was down half its population because of it.

(and then, the funerals. The many funerals before and after were definitely the worst of it)

“Hmm,” Nat hums, looking at him with her _ assessing _ eyes, which took Steve many years to be able to recognise. Steve blinks slowly at her, gets an idea of his own, and spins them around half a turn.

Then he leans in and whispers to her, “SHIELD is compromised.”

Natasha looks at him. “Really,” she says, lowering her voice just a pitch.

“I’ll brief you later,” Steve promises her, with a glance at the SHIELD agents in tuxedos standing right beside their makeshift dance floor. “When the party’s over.”

Natasha gives him another piercing look, and then she lets him go, thanks him for the dance, and disappears off into the crowd. Steve lets her be - she’s going to begin dismantling everything she knows and then reassessing all the agents in the building.

Steve then makes his way over to the one bar free from SHIELD agents, which also happens to be the one where his younger self is hanging around. He’s picking at one of those strange little quiches Steve still doesn’t like to eat, and when Steve approaches he just looks resigned. Oh boy.

Steve takes a chocolate pastry and tells him, “See that blond SHIELD agent over there?” He nods to Sharon Carter, who’s wearing a pantsuit and talking to one of Tony’s engineer colleagues, her hair in a long braid over one shoulder. “Her name’s Sharon Carter. Yes, she’s Peggy’s niece. But she’s also really fun to talk to, so maybe you should give it a go.”

His younger self looks at him with an expression of infinite exasperation and tiredness, and says, “Really?”

“I’m you,” Steve reminds himself. “C’mon. I know how you’re feeling right now.”

He looks like he wants to argue, realises there is literally no point whatsoever, and heaves a deep sigh. And then he quickly eats his quiche, and goes over to where Sharon is.

Steve hides his smile by taking another pastry.

He looks out over the room, and there’s Bruce and Helen and Maya, talking and sharing a plate of muffins. Phil, watching Sharon and Other Steve flirting with a blank expression. Nick and Maria and Pepper, having a very animated discussion about something. Natasha, sitting by herself on one of the balconies and looking down at the party with a thoughtful expression. And Tony himself, who looks up from his busy conversation to smile at Steve when he catches him looking.

Steve grins back, feeling the expression in his cheeks, and comes to the gentle and earth-shattering revelation that he can handle any and all uncertain futures and possible timeline problems, as long as he’s got Tony with him.

And that sometimes, if you’ve found yourself a home, then it’s better to stay than to leave.

* * *

“Excuse me for a minute,” Tony quickly says to Erwin, Bhang and Wyche, who all nod and smile knowingly but don’t try to keep him, and Tony smiles back before he turns to where Steve’s standing and starts moving. Steve watches him approach with a little smile on his own face, just a soft quirk of the lips, and Tony’s vision could with the help of Extremis label the exact shades of his lips and eyes and skin, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want anything to take his focus off of Steve now, not anymore.

“Hey,” Steve says, when Tony stops in front of him. “You want to dance?”

“Do you?” Tony says back, challenging, and Steve’s eyes seem to twinkle as he puts a hand on Tony’s waist. Oh, the endless thrill of some playful competition with Steve. Tony takes his other hand and grabs onto his shoulder, which is deliciously warm and firm beneath his fingers, and then Steve leads them out on the floor.

It is exactly as satisfying to dance with Captain America as Tony imagined, and he _ has _ imagined it.

More than once.

Tony ficks a thought to the speakers to up the volume of the music, and suddenly JARVIS is in his mind, remarking that _ THERE’S A VACANT BALCONY NEAR THE TWO OF YOU, SIR. _

“Are you even hearing the music?” Steve asks him, amused, and when Tony blinks Steve’s looking at him thoughtfully.

“J says there’s an empty balcony,” Tony blurts out. “Up there. In case you’d want to…” He waggles his eyebrows.

Steve shakes his head but he’s smiling. He lets go of Tony and says, “After you, then.”

Tony definitely feels more than just one set of eyes watching him as he climbs the stairs, but he doesn’t care. He joyously, gleefully doesn’t care, and this must be what people mean when they wish you a happy holidays, because up on the balcony the lights are very dim and the noise is very quiet and far-off, and there’s a plush red sofa, on which he sits down and waits for Steve to join him. And he does.

“Well, this is cosy,” he comments, on sitting down, and looks at Tony.

Tony looks at Steve’s lips and thinks about the grievously unfair fact that he’s not yet tasted them, even though he now knows more facts about Steve’s DNA and vitals than he ever planned to.

“Stop me if I’m wrong,” Tony murmurs, and feels his heartbeat pick up as he leans in closer to Steve, tilting his head to the side and closing his eyes because he doesn’t know of any way that he could possibly look at Steve in this exact moment, so close to him, so close to the end-

Steve’s hand snakes around his waist, and Tony fits their mouths together, feeling all the unbearable tension leave him with every second that Steve doesn’t withdraw, doesn’t tell him he’s misunderstood the whole situation.

It’s not the dirtiest, most passionate or longest kiss Tony’s ever had - it’s just human, warm and safe.

Steve holds him and doesn’t push for anything, seems as thrilled to share breath with Tony as Tony is to be here with Steve, like this.

It’s making something in Tony’s chest that used to be coiled tight unspool like yarn.

When Tony pulls back and opens his eyes, Steve looks at him in a way that Tony doesn’t even dare try to describe, it’s just too _ much, _ and touches a hand to Tony’s cheek for a brief moment. 

This is _ it _ . This is the actual, for real, _ only _ thing that matters in the entire universe and beyond right now.

“Hm,” Tony says, feeling a little drunk. “Wow. Can we do that again?”

“Oh, darling,” Steve breathes, and laughs and leans in close, and hey, yeah. Tony could totally live like this for the rest of the night (and all the nights after this one, too).

**Author's Note:**

> happy winter season! comments are greatly appreciated <3


End file.
